Turn the Page: A SHIELD Codex
by KhamanV
Summary: Torn from one nightmare and tossed into another, Loki isn't touched to discover he's Stephen Strange's first choice to run to when magical attacks strike the New York Sanctum. The goal of this assault? Reclaiming the Darkhold, held prisoner by Strange for the last few years.
1. Chapter 1

**Turn the Page: A SHIELD Codex**

_Strange is the night where black stars rise, and strange moons circle through the skies_

_But stranger still is lost Carcosa ~ The King in Yellow_

. . .

1\. Welcome to My Nightmare

. . .

It was a measure of hard-fought trust that Loki not only slept within the confines of the hidden SHIELD facility, but that he would dream. Even surrounded by hundreds of well-meaning humans, all of whom liked to talk in the morning about whatever nonsense their neurons burped up in the night. A topic of discussion that never failed to stupefy him with its irrelevance, and yet they barreled on, and often tried to ask him what he dreamed about.

Of course, being a sorcerer with an amazing talent for self-control and, to be honest, self-delusion meant he would describe his dreams as typically under the sort of lockdown reserved for career mentalists and aging hippies that had kept a dream journal for fifty plus years. Typically. Not even he could keep the BS up for too long.

Sometimes, and more often than he liked, things got through that he would much rather not be dealing with. The pounding nightmares of childhood, wordless screaming matches with Thor, horrifying scenarios, each one increasingly worse, about how Frigga had been murdered. The common potpourri of a mind trying to cope with centuries of awful shit going down on a fairly regular basis.

Tonight Loki was dreaming, unhappily, of the Framework.

The Framework was one of those SHIELD situations where, deep down, he wished he'd been assigned to some moronic Scooby Doo case on the other side of the world when it happened. He'd missed a number of particularly awful situations that way and didn't regret it. He _had_ missed the prior bit where that mad scientist twit, Radcliffe, had decided some old SHIELD cybernetics program designed to create protective 'LMDs' for high profile targets meant he should build some robot woman named AIDA under similar auspices. AIDA, because apparently Loki hadn't been subjected to _enough_ stupid movies where robots took over the world, promptly went rogue and attempted to take over the world, or whatever, he'd been too pissed off by the whole scenario to pay attention to some of the finer details.

What was equally true, and equally infuriating, was that the robot woman had access to the deepest SHIELD personnel archives, and thus, managed to get the drop on _him_ pretty much right out the gate, rendering him useless, locked in her inane dreamscape as her goons continued to scoop up and replace other SHIELD agents. An absolute embarrassment. He still refused to talk about any of it, even with Daisy or Coulson. He had been left too exposed to himself, and made defenseless. Bastard machines.

Dear gods, but Loki _hated_ artificial intelligence. Nothing was dumber than a doe-eyed mortal than a mechanical brain that didn't fully grasp that it had been created by those same mortals and was therefore doomed to be dumber yet, because the machine couldn't even make up for it with an imagination.

AIDA's Framework simulation created a world where Hydra had supplanted all rebellious SHIELD influence and forged it into a peaceful but fascist state with herself as its leader. It had two purposes. The first was to imprison anyone in the real world so they couldn't interfere with her second, which was to become a real girl with a slopping bucketful of Inhuman-styled powers. And kiss Fitz, apparently.

With dimly amusing flair, she'd shoved Loki's consciousness into an earthbound Asgardian embassy, attempting to placate his struggling sense of self with the idea of becoming Odin's favored son and diplomat, living among the humans, lauded and wined by the new powers that be. With his influence, the Nine Realms were now allied with Hydra, and he himself was styled as the second most important personage in the realms on paper, first in effectualness.

It'd taken Loki maybe fifteen minutes to realize something was up. It occurred to him, as he 'woke' from a nap on a luxurious Asgardian couch left in his embassy office, that he wanted some books from his rooms in Asgard, whose titles he couldn't seem to quite recall, and for various bullshit diplomatic reasons, he couldn't simply nip off and get them.

The actual reasons included the fact that attempting to build an entire Asgard out of his memories would toast AIDA's program so hard her head would smoke. Gods know, he'd tried anyway as he realized the depths of their trouble, and even for that reason. Tried for weeks or hazy, illusive months, until Daisy and Jemma cut their way into the simulation to undo AIDA's looming disaster.

Which led to the dream he was trying very hard to not have.

. . .

The Framework looted his thoughts and memories wholesale, building relationships and scenarios that called temptingly to Loki even as he was increasingly aware that nothing was real, _none_ of it. Hamstrung by the way he'd been rendered near-powerless and given this false golden chain of leadership as pacifier, he could rarely leave the embassy to cause havoc in the simulation without drawing attention. Here he was in actual danger. Here he could be _killed_ \- and the emotions he felt, devastatingly, were real. Every day he worried AIDA would simply unplug him and let him wither into death, the worst, most pointless end Loki could imagine for himself. If it had been him in charge, he would have done it days ago. It had been a horror all its own to awaken and see that, in fact, some had indeed died that way. Including foolish, well-meaning, overbearing Mace.

"You can't," Loki said to Kara in the dream as he'd had then, feeling numb, knowing none of it mattered, knowing it still did. Nearby, at a window, Daisy was keeping an eye on the approaching Hydra assault team, god-killer ordinance slung onto the back of a reinforced truck. She'd arrived for the first time only a couple of days before, sagging in relief as she realized Loki was aware of the Framework's falsity in the way others, like Coulson, she'd approached hadn't yet been. "You shouldn't do this."

Lady Kara, assigned by AIDA's program to run the embassy's security team, looked unmoved by his protest. He'd known her as one of Frigga's handmaidens long ago, in actuality a secret tool of the Queen, a weapon rarely but effectively used - and who had very nearly turned on Odin after the Queen's death, almost taking _him, _then pretending to the throne in disguise, instead. In daylight he thought of her only occasionally, a pointless if wistful what-if. AIDA had dredged her up, given her a starring role in his prisoner's nightmare, and now he was dreaming of the minutes before this ghost of the person he'd known willingly went to die for his sake.

"It doesn't matter, does it? If you're right." Kara glanced out the window, seeing the missiles being wrenched into position. She had the same unimpressed expression she wore when removing Hydra capitalists from his offices, or coming across him drunk and trying to cope with this mind's prison. "I've heard you, you know. At night. When the girl came. You're not as good at secrets as you care to think, Your Highness. If we're all only dreams here, then it's past time to wake up."

"Not like this." She was right, and it didn't matter to him. No more deaths on his account, not in dreams, not in reality.

Loki shifted in his bed, muttering the same words to himself. Not like this. One hand clenched on a pillow taken from Asgard - a lesson learned after some other long ago nightmare left foam pieces scattered around to be discovered in the morning.

In reality there had been many more things said, things he'd buried deep. In the dream, Kara patted his cheek. "Sentiment," she said and, ghastly, it sounded like his own voice. The walls began to melt, though the sound of the missile launch hadn't happened yet. They had to run, they had to flee, the missiles were here, the missiles hadn't launched yet. He knew how it ended, the embassy in flames, the dying woman plunging her knives into Hydra soldiers, him not wanting to look back and doing so anyway.

"Who's she?" asked Stephen Strange, filling his vision with his magically gleaming aura.

Loki's body jerked on the bed. In the dream, Loki wrenched around, the embassy gone and replaced with a starry, endless black. "Strange?"

"Listen, ignore the question, we need to talk."

"_Strange_?"

"It's kind of an emergency situation." In the dream, Strange had his hands in the pockets of his doctor's scrubs. The red cloak still rested on his shoulders, however, and he looked even more annoyed than Strange did as a general rule. "Could you wake up?"

"Are you sure that's what you need? Because when I wake up, Strange, I am going to _strangle_ you!" Hot rage hit Loki like a tsunami. No one invaded his dreams and saw what he kept in privacy. _No-godsdamned-one_.

"Buddy, if you can do it, you're welcome to," said Strange, and his voice was weighted stone. "I'm kind of half past give a shit. I've had a _night_, is what I'm trying to tell you, so if you could wake up, I promise, if we get this sorted, you can kick my ass all you want later. Because I might actually have my ass again by then."

"What?" said Loki, still pissed off and now also extremely confused, and he woke up.

. . .

Loki sat bolt-upright on the bed, the corner of a pillow choked off in one hand and the sheets of his bed kicked to the floor. He stared at the ghostly image hovering in the corner of his private room, and his throat worked in fits and chokes, trying to put his voice back together. Mostly so he could scream the four hundred increasingly savage invectives he had lined up.

"I didn't take you for a casual jammies guy." Strange's translucent spirit pointed at the old black jogging pants and the thin, baseball-style jersey top Loki was wearing. "I don't want to say I spent _any_ amount of mental energy assuming you went natural, but I think I figured it was either that or some flowing Supreme Leader Snoke bedrobe thing."

"Strange," Loki rasped, still choking on his own anger. "What the f-"

"The Sanctum Sanctorum got hit a couple hours ago." Strange waved behind him, as if for emphasis. "Wong's currently got the shields back up and we're cycling in sorcerers from the other Sanctums to help buttress the protections, but we don't know when they're going to hit again and how much harder they'll strike next time. We don't know who 'they' are yet, except as some trails of energy we're trying to pin down. Oh, and also, one of their agents slipped into the aetheric plane and managed to do _this_ to me before everything lit up. Good forward planning. Assholes."

Loki bit off the hundreds of insults he had ready to go, storing them in a mental to-do list for later, and quickly used his magical senses to map out the nature of the spirit-form Strange was currently in. He leaned back onto his elbows, another pillow squishing under one as he considered. It was, assuredly, not a great situation for Strange. Very well. "Your body?"

"I'm stable. It's a purely magical attack, so the rules are something we're still figuring out. According to Wong, I _do_ have to go sit in my shell every hour or so or my connection to my body is shot and I'll likely die for real. It doesn't make sense, medically, which makes me crazy, but that's what life is these days." Strange grimaced, then summoned an equally translucent image. "There's a knife suspended above my body, splitting the link between my soul and my physical form with its tip, metaphorically speaking. There's nothing we can do about it until we catch up to the attacker and unwind the spell from his hand. My death, as you'll be able to see, wasn't the primary goal. Making sure I stayed out of commission, and suffered, while they got up to whatever they wanted, that's what they're into."

Loki studied the weapon. A kind of athame, to be certain, but not of a type he recognized. It was roughly forged of some black metal, possibly even simple iron, and its pommel jutted from the handle like a threat. The runes on it were more familiar. Chaotic. Terrible. He looked away. "Gods, Strange. Don't tell me this. Tell me I woke up into another nightmare instead."

"Can't do that, Loki." Strange sighed. "Yet another crazy bastard is trying to get at the Darkhold, and this one has a plan that hasn't completely failed yet."

Loki buried his face in his hands, not at all touched that, under duress, Strange had come straight to him for help. Then he shoved those hands back, straightening out his sleep mussed hair with a touch of magic. "Get out of my room. I need to dress, and I refuse to have your witless commentary droning in my ear while I do so. I'll be at the Sanctum shortly."

"You can take a little time for a shower. I promise I won't listen to you sing."

"Stay astral, Strange, for your sake, for as long as you can. Dear Gods, best show _some_ gratitude for your current state of affairs." Loki flung the covers back up onto his bed for emphasis, staring the ghostly sorcerer dead in the eyes as he did so. A small black and orange cat tiptapped her way into the room, jumped onto the bed, and took immediate, cozy advantage of the rearranged quilt.

"Wong sings Beyonce in the kitchen some nights when he thinks I'm latched into the aether. What do you go for? Hozier?"

_"Get out!" _A pillow sailed through Strange's ghostly form, causing only a single arched eyebrow, but at last, to Loki's peevish relief, he vanished.


	2. Chapter 2

2\. Here We Go Again

. . .

Showy, sparking portals were for human sorcerers that wanted to show off how neat it was for people who lived about eighty years on average to cast basic spells. Loki, able to forge the forbidden paths between and betwixt for a hell of a lot longer than that, stepped through the door of his room hidden deep within the SHIELD facility and glided out of an alley near the Bleecker Street mansion with all the fanfare of a panther's fart. He had the look on his face of a man who'd been awoken in the dead of night and demanded either a corpse or an apocalypse as an explanation for that sin, and taking a few long, ranging steps towards the Sanctum, he got exactly that.

The building looked perfectly fine from the outside, of course. A handful of drunk people staggering away from last call were on the sidewalks, and they didn't notice the old landmark, didn't look up at the purple, full-dark sky high above that strange and mystic window set upon the mansion's roof. Nor did the late-shift employees, or the bohemians that kept strange hours. And none of them looked at Loki, who stared with wide eyes (and one shocked third one, in a manner of speaking) at the Sanctum, seeing something entirely else.

Strange had not exaggerated the issue. If anything, he'd been dangerously glib. Underneath the visible layer of physical reality, the astral planes where magic lived surged and roiled in chaotic disarray. Like an infection burrowing fever-hot under the skin, the mansion was still under constant attack by some invisible, deadly force. Loki could see where the mystic protections were nearly burned through, scars in a perfectly ordered latticework of magic. The shields held, but only due to the life forces propping up that lattice from inside.

His steps turned hurried, stashing pretense and even his usual sardonic attitude, until Loki saw Wong waiting for him at the opened door with the tightest, harshest expression the man had ever worn. Then he sprinted neatly up the short few steps and into the mansion, feeling the protections slam shut around them.

. . .

"The athame isn't metal, actually," said Wong, leading Loki past a knot of distracted sorcerers focusing on the unseen assault and on towards the central staircase. He turned his head, sensing Loki's disbelief. "It's bone. I've never seen the likes of it before. The blade is a tooth, I believe. The rest of the tool, I don't know for certain. Leathers and bone, similarly unknown source. No one here recognizes any part of it."

"A tooth of what possible creature?" Loki scoffed as he followed Wong up, hiding his surprise with fake dismissal. No, he believed Wong, but that belief also required a work of imagination he didn't want to try. Not until he had to. "Not even Surtur's wyrms have teeth like that, and I've got a blade of my own for comparison."

"You saw Strange's vision. You'll see it for yourself in a moment." Wong waved at the door to Strange's private chamber, steadying himself with a hand on a balcony rail as the Sanctum creaked under another invisible assault. "Damn them."

Loki glanced up with a frown, sensing the arcing energy of the assault and its lack of any sensible pattern. Raw chaos given purpose, then, sundering against the roof of the mansion like black and cursed rain. He felt the old nausea return. "Any sign of who's leading the assault? Any idea yet how they got to Strange?"

"No. None." Wong sounded frustrated. "They couldn't have physically manifested inside the Sanctum for more than a second, but it was enough." He turned to Loki, his expression still harsh. "But the safe money says they're Chthonics. Darkholder fanatics, crawling out into the light."

Loki glanced at the door to Strange's room, knowing he wasn't hiding his unhappiness with any of this. "I'd very much hoped mad cultists were going to be a one-off thing when we sealed away that eldritch monstrosity in Scotland." He inclined his head, looking wry. "For the sake of my leg, if nothing else."

"Shuma-Gorath's children have faded into shadows, yes. But it seems these fanatics have become emboldened since." Wong pushed the door open. "And we, unfortunately, know little of Chthon's remaining servants. Only that they are well-organized. This is no mere cult we are dealing with, I think."

. . .

Loki knew it was going to be bad. This was worse.

The impossible knife looked as if it were balanced perfectly atop Strange's breast, the tip of it piercing through the Chinese-style tunic Strange had been sleeping in and tracing like a feather against the skin itself. Indeed, forcing himself closer for a pained study, the blade of it wasn't pitted, blackened metal at all, but some sort of tar-like bone wrapped with old leathers. That jutting, threatening pommel was not only shown to be some other scrap of marrow, but cradled inside it and passing for ornamentation was a hard, preserved organ he couldn't identify.

Undulating, sickly energy poured from that tip, ensnaring Strange's body in a grotesquerie of honeycombed cells. The power of it thrummed against Loki's skin like the heartbeat of a mad god, screaming in a cacophony of forbidden language, all of it ringing familiar in his ears. The lost names of an imprisoned master, a dead yet eternal _thing_ that had once glimpsed freedom through Loki's own eyes, chanting unceasingly, that old blood music surging with awful vitality, looking for another host to hollow out.

Loki wrenched himself away from Strange's body with a gasp, horrified anew.

"Yeah, it's pretty awful. I couldn't even begin to come up with how to warn you, so I just sort of hoped for the best and figured you'd do your usual stoic bullshit to get through. Not your first rodeo, etcetera. I should have been more clear. I'm sorry about that." Strange's astral presence stepped into being next to him, sounding quiet. Even genuine. "I promise it's not revenge for wrecking this place that one time."

"That one time that's suddenly, terribly relevant again?" There wasn't any heat in the accusation. Loki was too busy making sure last night's meal was staying where it was, both arms pressed against his abdomen like a child.

"Tea?" said Wong from by the door. "I've got an excellent ginger that was sent over last week."

"Please," said Loki, giving up on any pretense of faking his way through this. He waited for Wong to leave, and he also didn't turn back to Strange's body. "Why is the assault continuing?"

"To wear us down, to keep distracting us, to make sure I can't get a grip on anything." Strange gestured around his translucent self. "It's a really good question, but that's the usual guess. My actual theory is that they're trying to breach the prison, to get at the book itself. I knew it would happen someday, but less than a decade? They must have had an expensive reservation they can't cancel and thought this would be easier."

"And its servants?" Five ancient sorceresses who had tried to awaken the Darkhold's greatest potential and their dreadful maker, sealed away in that same oubliette.

"They're still asleep. I think they're tired of conflict, and it's going to be too much of a hassle to get them out, too." Strange shrugged. "So, funny thing, I have good news."

Loki looked around until he spotted a chair pulled out next to a small desk, dropping himself into it like a bag falling into a dumpster. "When is there _ever_ good news around this beshitted grimoire? When?"

"They accidentally bought us a good chunk of time by pulling this stunt. I don't think they guessed I had it in me. Literally." Strange pointed at his body. "So hey, get this? The metaphorical lock on their prison is a very specific kind of enchantment. One I think you're gonna find pretty familiar."

Loki put his face in his hands, already taking a guess. "You didn't."

"It's not a full soul-tether, I'm not _that_ stupid. We had some works on old artifact binding, things translated from Old Aesir that we got from a site out in Tonsberg, Germany, like a thousand years ago."

"You _didn't_."

"And it had this neat diagram of how you guys made the royal spear. That Gungnir thingy."

Loki gave up on words and settled for groaning through his hands with as much pained drama as he could imbue the sound with.

"So the prison is tied _both_ to a physical key-artifact that we think they're trying to get at, and to my lifeforce."

Loki didn't react when Wong returned and put the mug of tea on the desk next to him. He'd quit. Full blue-screen.

"They either have to get the key and enter the Sanctum physically, which still has a shit-ton of protections on it and is going to be one hell of a fight, not to mention that where the key is isn't exactly a Party City, _or_ they have to completely drain my lifeforce and wedge their way in through astral planar travel. Which isn't going to go well, since we've got like thirty more sorcerers on site to keep the shields up." Strange was grinning when Loki dropped his hands to glower at him. "And that athame can't kill me unless _I_ screw up. It's very specifically designed to make sure I survive what it's doing to my body, so they completely blocked off that entrance to themselves."

"For now. Until they realize their mistake."

"Well, yeah."

Loki picked up the mug of tea, caught in a small double-take when he realized the mug was a ceramic, badly painted head of the Hulk, and gave Wong a look that said _you knew what you were doing_.

Wong looked back, straight-faced.

Loki drank the tea anyway and immediately started to feel a little better. "All right. You're certain the physical key you made is safe?"

"Certain enough."

Loki stared at Strange's projection over the rim of Hulk's ceramic, hollowed out skull. "When it comes to 'not my first rodeo,' Strange, the _ultimate_ thing I had to learn was to make no assumptions about my safety nor of any protections when it comes to that godsdamned hell-grimoire. It has a way of destroying every pretense you have. I can't believe I have to explain that to you."

"Loki, the thing's been locked in a pit-slash-soul jar for a couple of years, almost totally drained of its energy. It's lost every matchup it's had with us. It's inert right now." Strange rolled his eyes. "This isn't about the book, so long as we can keep these idiots from breaking in. It's about that last page of it that got away. The final sorceress from Centralia took it, that Fade. She's dead, by the way. Her last physical anchor died days after we lit the place up."

"Oh, that's _much_ better." Loki's voice was acid. "Just one page on the loose for years, torn free and presumably changing hands among its loyalists since, no, that's fine, wars are never won or lost on the results of one critical loss."

"Loki."

"No, no, you're right. Just one page from a book that attempted, and damned near succeeded, to eat my soul whole after barely fiddling with it for a couple of days, a book written in the language of pure and ultimate darkness, no problem. It's just one page, probably a spellcaster's equivalent of dirty limericks about demon genitals, of course, it's no trouble." Loki was aware his voice was rising and didn't give a damn. "Of _course_ a scrap of semi-sentient boiling evil wouldn't be so desperate to reconnect with its whole that it couldn't _possibly_ become an even bigger problem!"

Strange crossed his arms. "You done?"

Loki stood up, bellowing now. "Not in the fucking _least_ am I done! You wake my arse up in the middle of the night, invading my dreams, short-selling the amount of trouble you're in, all to find out you're standing there acting like the prince of the ball when _a fucking fanatic demon horde is standing on your porch asking if you've been touched by dark gods, and they've got one Hel of pamphlet to share with you!_"

Strange blinked, thrown by the agitated assault. "Look-"

"He's right," said Wong.

Loki sat back down, stunned into renewed calm. "I'm what?"

Strange turned to Wong, his head cocked in disbelief. "Excuse me, _whose_ body is currently pinned down by an eldritch attack? I'm not underestimating anything."

"Stephen. I don't believe you are. But I _do_ think, under the circumstances, that Loki's experience with the book is more pertinent." Wong pressed his hands together. "We have been guardians and protectors and chosen of the Vishanti. But the Darkhold was lost to us for a long time. It is easy to misunderstand what we've forgotten, easier so when we have not ourselves seen the worst results of such mistakes. I think we must take extra care here."

"_Thank_ you." Loki ignored Strange whirling on him. He didn't ignore the look he got, though, which then slipped past him towards something else. The look turned irritated. "What?"

"Did you honestly bring your cat with you?"

Loki opened his mouth as if to say no, but then realized what must have happened. Instead, he looked up at the ceiling, knowing this was going to be a pointless conversation. "Frej, I told you stay home. You're not old enough to be traipsing around like you think you want."

"_Mrp_!" It sounded perky and not a little defiant. The little orange and black cat pip-popped out of the shadows to sit next to Loki's shoe, staring up at Strange's astral spirit.

Strange looked down at the cat with dim recognition. The animal that had jumped onto Loki's bed. "Didn't take you for the type to arrange for a grimalkin. Fussy things, most familiars."

"Stephen, you didn't listen when I tried to tell you." Wong glanced at Loki, looking tired. "That's a flerken. Not a familiar."

"A what?"

Wong shook his head. "We adopted a few in Hong Kong a couple of months ago when Nick Fury presided over a litter of the creatures. Fine mousers. _Very_ good watchmen."

"What's a flerken? Why am I having to ask about this in the middle of a metaphysical assault?" Nobody answered him.

Loki looked down at Frej, then at Strange's physical form, then at Wong. Wong blinked back, getting it instantly. Loki felt himself begin to grin, sharklike and delighted. "I have an _extremely_ good idea."

Strange narrowed his eyes at Loki. "About what?"

"We need to secure your body, while also making sure you can get access to it, all while we figure out how to deal with your guests. Can it be moved safely?"

"My body is perfectly secure here."

"Really isn't, Stephen. That this happened proves it. And yes, it can, if we're cautious. The blade is acting like it's embedded and won't move easily." Oh, Wong was all in. Loki had a sneaking suspicion he was going to enjoy getting one over on Strange tonight more than he was. It was understandable. At least Loki didn't have to _live_ with the man. "Is she agreeable?"

Loki looked down at his small, furry companion. It wasn't quite right to call her a pet, nor was he any sort of master to her. They were friends, perhaps, with her as an adopted sort of fuzzy child. _Honestly_, it occurred to him, _calling her a familiar is actually closer to the right relationship, if yet complicated_. He inclined his head politely. "Frej, instead of my being annoyed that you disobeyed me, would you prefer I asked you to assist?"

"Mewp!" The young flerken sounded pleased by her partner's formal tone.

"Excellent."

"What is going on?" Strange, unable to do anything on the physical plane, nonetheless put his hands out in horror as Frej popped up onto the bed next to his body and did her thing. "What is she- _OH MY GOD_!"

Frej delicately began to wash her paw, having neatly retracted all her mouth-deployed tentacles - and Strange's magically impaled body - back into one of the pocket dimensions that lived within her. She didn't bother to look at Strange's astral shape, but there was a distinct sense that she was enjoying his reaction.

Loki, meanwhile, would gleefully swear in a court of law that his entire astral presence had turned a delightful shade of sickly green.


	3. Chapter 3

3\. The Wolves of Wall Street

. . .

SHIELD Agent Aggie Harkness let Frej wiggle around in her arms, the flerken adding the emphasis of an occasional hard bunt up under her chin, as she followed Loki down the steps of the Sanctum Sanctorum. What was going on didn't need heavy description. Aggie, too, was long-familiar with Chthonic magic and could sense the magical assault as plainly as he could. That talent was the heart of why she'd found this new career late in her life. However: "You usually don't want backup for a sniff test."

"I _do_ when it comes back to that godsdamned book and every single speck of lint associated with it." Loki rolled an eye over his shoulder at her. "I take no chances, then. I didn't take them when we met, Agent Harkness, and I'm not taking them today."

"Point." Aggie gave up trying to hold Frej in any sort of controlled cuddle position and hoisted the flerken by the rear up to her own shoulder so that she could hook in like a tree-cat. That worked better, the butt of the tail twitching eagerly against her palm, with a wet, full purr going off in her ear. She expected the animal would start chewing on strands of her greying hair next, and didn't much care. Her own 'actual' cat, Sabrina, did it all the time. "Very good point."

"We're not going to split up, we're not going alone into basements, and we are absolutely _not_ going to taunt the gods while they're watching me fumble around yet another eldritch horror-show. I want a full-sense test of the aether in a grid around the Sanctum, as sensitive and as detailed as you can muster. I will be doing the same. We are double-checking _everything_. Now. The attackers will have a cluster within line of sight from which they will be managing the assault. I want to identify it. We are also looking for the identifying marks of enemy sorcerers, traps left for the Sanctum's defensive force, the intensity of their link to Chaos, any interfering power, and perhaps a place with a decent bagel. It's New York, everyone tells me you come for the pizza and the bagels. I've had the pizza, it's fair I suppose, but I've been up since three and I've not had breakfast yet. I might kill a man for a halfway decent egg bagel. Might kill a man anyway, I get a fair chance."

Aggie patted the butt of the animal in her arms and said, as dryly as she could get away with, "Is that in escalating order of priority, boss?"

"I don't care. And don't call me _boss_, Harkness. Stablemen are called boss, and bootlicked generals. I am neither, thank you _very_ much."

"He's very grumpy this morning," said Aggie to Frej.

"_Mep_!"

"You're _so_ right, he's grumpy a lot of mornings."

An agreeable purr, with a cheek lick to boot.

"I can hear you, Agent." It sounded acidic. "And I can _infer_ the rest, Frej."

"Good," said Aggie, who, in contrast, had enjoyed a perfectly nice night's sleep and was feeling refreshed this morning. "There's a bagel joint up around the corner that Wong likes."

Loki said nothing, but he did stalk across the quiet street in the direction she indicated.

. . .

Slightly mollified by a bagel loaded with that zesty rooster sauce he liked and a fair amount of breakfast sausage, Loki left the bagel shop with a stupidly large coffee in one hand and a tracking spell flickering around his other. "I spotted a handful of possible trap-trails while you were washing up," he said to Aggie, looking at the roof of the Sanctum where it loomed over a few other nearby business. "We can start with those. Perhaps they're hoping for sleepy sorcerers coming out and heading to the subway station at Washington Square. Let's start by disarming them in the messiest way possible. Wager that'll bring us a little attention."

"Do we _want_ that kind of attention?" Frej had struck a compromise with Aggie and was now lightly curled up against the back of Aggie's neck, using her dark hoodie as an ad hoc basket. Every once in a while Aggie reached up to give the flerken a scritchie.

"If they send a contingent of attackers our way, it'll give the Sanctum a breather. Maybe even a clue as to their staging point, based on their own trails. I doubt we'd get much. A scout or two, to see if they've got a snare. Best case, we get someone to question, then start chewing our way up the line. Wong's monitoring, check the aetheric layers. You'll find where he's hiding a line of his consciousness, if you focus. If we're in it deep, he'll expedite backup our way."

Aggie 'found' Wong easily enough - Sanctum sorcerers had a tickly little silver thread connected to them, something to do with the way they tied themselves multi-dimensionally to Kamar-Taj. He sent a zot of warm, soothing magic her way to acknowledge that he was, in fact, watching them. "Roger that." She spread her consciousness outward, her body adept enough now from the last couple of years of Loki's teaching to automate simple things like not stepping in sidewalk holes, and found Loki's tracking spell a few 'layers' down. Sure enough, there were tremulous 'clouds' in several locations near the subway. "Not the usual snare spells. Those have a compound draining component."

"Very good, Harkness." The pleasure sounded genuine. "That's an advanced technique, too. Almost vampiric."

Aggie couldn't resist a wince. "Or literally. My ancestors would feed an allied demon with that sort of energy to keep the bargains up. If they didn't take a snack for themselves." Aggie's ancestors were a coven of darkness that spent their centuries attempting to grant the Darkhold and its creator monstrous supremacy over the world. All of them were dead, including the one named Thorn, forced by holy vengeance into a mortal shell, and whose daughters and granddaughters bore some remnant scar of her curse.

"Of course," said Loki, with a brief, soft nod. He was not exactly a warm and cuddly sort, and never would be, but Aggie appreciated that he had real sympathy for, well, 'complicated' family situations. "To be expected of Chthonics, but we'll definitely be doing the locals a favor getting rid of them."

. . .

Disarming trap spells was, unless one made an effort, much less showy than its mundane equivalent, bomb disposal. Harkness and Loki sat together on a bench a few yards away from the snares, looking to passersby pretty much as if they were two generic New Yorkers taking a quick nap while waiting for an Uber. Behind their eyelids, glowing 'threads' of magic were detangled and then cut off, rendering the traps useless. Now, the _cutting_, which Loki was in charge of, was more like blowing shit up with all the magical subtlety of a Michael Bay movie, which _technically_ counted as showy, but only if one could see it. One huffy businessman tromped by the bench in the middle of a particularly explosive - but still invisible - bit of trap destruction, giving Loki the sort of look Wall Street wonks saved for dilettantes that would soon go back to selling junk hog futures in Omaha or whatever.

How _dare_ young professionals _sleep_ when money was to be made. Fortunately for the Wall Street guy, Loki had his eyes fully closed for this bit. Harkness stepped up, however, feeling a vague desire to defend her jackass boss, and shot the guy her middle finger. Wall Street Guy got a scrunched look on his face, hissed as if he'd been struck, sneered at her, and then continued on his way.

"Did I miss something?" Loki didn't open his eyes.

"Breakfast snack." Aggie rolled hers. "Stale."

"Fools," said Loki mildly, gathering what had actually happened by tone, and he resumed trying to tell every enemy sorcerer in a five mile radius '_hey come kick our asses_.'

. . .

There were suddenly rather a lot more people on the street, despite being in an patch of slow time between subway arrivals and departures. Loki had scrounged up a bag of chips since breaking down the last spell, mostly for the local birds, and he didn't look up as his senses picked up the aura of first two, then five, then nine new arrivals. Said auras had a specific 'feel' of hostility, of something dark and wet and very, very old, and when he finally bothered to glance at one of them, he was honestly disappointed that this willing host for demonic magics looked like a grade school lunch lady, right down to a greenish brown button-up rain slicker and hair that looked netted even if it wasn't. "No one has _style_ on this planet. If you're going to truck abouts with unholy magics, you should have a look. _I_ think, anyway."

"Strange has that cloak of his. It's pretty flashy." Aggie had her eye on a different hostile sorcerer, a gritty-faced and portly older man in a thick coat far too warm for this time of year.

"I've got what?" The translucent apparition of Strange appeared behind their bench. "Are you two aware-"

"Yes." Loki parceled out another handful of broken chips to some oblivious pigeons, then put the empty bag down on his leg and dusted off his hands.

Not an easy thing to make an awkward pause into something not only audible but physical, but Strange managed it. "Where's the cat?"

"She's around. Frej happens to like street food. Plenty of it in New York, and I expect the local predators don't mind her help." Loki adjusted the sleeve of his jacket, feeling the handle of the athame right in position. He tapped it, changing the spell that held it in place into something more active.

Strange took a moment to piece that together. "She's going to put dead _rat bits_ in her guts right next to me?" He sounded horror-stricken.

Loki sighed. "You're not in her stomach, you idiot, her dimensional pockets don't work like that. But I'm quite sure she and I can make some arrangements."

"Excuse me for not being up on alien biology, I've been busy maintaining the sanctity of Earth's magical forces."

"Yes, and how's that working out for you?" Loki watched the lunch lady cross the street with a bland expression on her narrow face. "Don't answer, things are about to get a mite frisky."

"Oh, I've got a stockpile of responses waiting. The one that looks like a lunch lady is going to be your first striker. They're not just here with attack magic, you should know. There's something else."

Loki stood up to throw away the bag, the athame ready to fall into his palm. Aggie was already on her feet next to him. "I expect they're wired in to the Sanctum attack," he said, sensing the 'lunch lady' winding up her best shot.

"I'm not sure that-"

That was all Strange got out before Loki stopped listening to him. The lunch lady began to charge across the street towards Loki with shocking, inhuman speed. She screamed a word, something horrible that wormed against his ears as he raised the athame up and cut off a spell intended to choke out a sphere of air around him. He returned fire instantly, the force of some invisible blast throwing the woman back. Her features shifted and tore, showing something awful buried beneath her skin. Still, she didn't get back up right away.

The portly guy was on his way towards Aggie, his feet tromping loudly across the pavement like hoofbeats. She didn't wait to see what he was going to do, she zotted him with a little shock-spell she favored and watched him drop in place, easily conked out. "Here come the rest."

Except that they didn't. The seven other enemy sorcerers took half-moon positions across the road, which had gone empty of passing cars. At this point, Loki usually expected a rubbernecker or two to realize something extra weird was going on in the Big Apple, but no. All civilian presence was suddenly, mysteriously gone.

Loki's hair had grown a bit longer yet over the last year, and still hung naturally thick and heavy despite Daisy's occasional attempts to sneak up on him and force the mane into a manbun, or, as he liked to call it, an act of war. So it took a lot these days to get the bits around the back of his neck to stand up on end, but by Gods, they were doing it. "Harkness!"

"I'm ready." Ozone snapped around her hands. Her eyes looked wild, matching her senses telling her clearly that something was _off_.

"I'm telling you two, I can _sense_ something else here. It's like going blind, without my body all I can _feel_ is magical energy. Lots of it." Strange flickered closer to the pair. "It's on the plane underneath, buckling through, and it's getting close."

"Oh gods, it's going to be one of those days after all, isn't it?" Loki sounded strangely annoyed, particularly when compared with the tableau his statement was then matched with. "I didn't expect that quick of an escalation, really."

The veil of reality blistered somewhere around a wet pothole in the middle of the street, and the back end of a Kia Soul buckled as if something large and remarkably heavy had sat on it. It wasn't visible to the naked eye yet, but Loki could sense the shape of the thing approaching, and it wasn't any good. The remaining sorcerers seemed focused, likely on stabilizing the thing's entry.

. . .

To say a creature is a 'demon' often creates a certain visual shorthand - bulky, sort of confusingly ripped, a nice set of leathery wings, a grimacingly broad and ruby-black face crowned with some sexy horns, maybe some nice matching hooves. Never skips leg day.

As both Loki and Aggie Harkness were intimately aware from previous awful encounters, you _wish_ demons looked like that.

This demon was reddish-black, yes, but mostly as an accidental function of the particular dimensional hell-pocket it was clawing its way out of. It had a tail, a thick and tumor-riddled thing that, absurdly, had plunged most of the way out into the physical plane first and was finishing the job on that poor Kia, who had never asked for any of this, and was tipped with something that dimly resembled a scorpion's stinger, if that scorpion was into inflation kink. Its venom, Loki assumed, was going to be fatal enough for _anybody_, up to and including him, and so he didn't focus so much on the rest of the demon's horrible appearance as he was already planning how to cut _that_ fucking thing off straightaway.

Aggie got an eyeful of the rest of it, managing an unsurprised but still nauseated _gurk_ deep in her throat. It was thin in the wrong places, sickly-saggy in others, had an absolutely illegal amount of vestigial limbs jutting out of places they shouldn't be, and these limp horrors had gaps torn through the skin that were filled to overflow with fetid-looking teeth. That was before one got to the head, which is honestly better left without description, except that it had an awful lot of blood-weeping deadlight eyes and they were all looking at her in a way that explained that this demon was a machine of hate, and right now it hated her, specifically.

"So that's cute," said Strange, thrown by the sheer awfulness of their new guest. "Hey, feeling pretty good about being discorporated right now, actually."

Loki said nothing. Instead he raised the hand with the athame in it, giving the demon his very best 'well, let's do this thing' look.

"I'll just nip off and make sure Wong's throwing backup your way, shall I?"

Loki continued to say nothing, although his teeth began to grit in that feral way he had.

The demon began to move.


	4. Chapter 4

4\. Not Exactly By the Book

. . .

_Some point fairly recently_:

Loki put both his palms on the borrowed lectern, glowering with benign but permanently etched-in annoyance at his audience. It was Coulson's idea to begin a series of occasional seminars on combative magical situations, because of course it was, and today's topic was demonological assault. "My first suggestion to you in the course of normal SHIELD operations is for you to hope you personally _never_ have to deal with any form of major demonic attack. However, since this is SHIELD, and lately we seem to deal with an increasing variety of bizarre entities before lunchtime on the daily, let's assume you're already a bit fair screwed in that regard."

Acting SHIELD Director Phil Coulson, seated in the front row, gave a polite cough to suggest that Loki might dial the hostility back a bit. He got a glare back for his trouble - his suffering, his rules. Loki continued on, not changing his tone a whit.

"When you suspect such an attack may be coming, whether you've got an active magical sense, a local wizard screaming profane warnings at you, or there's a bunch of robed arseholes chanting in horrible dead languages nearby, that warning is itself often your first useful defense. A random attack by a mortal stranger in the street, knife in hand - this is something that may have little telegraph. The human themselves may not commit to violence against you until he sees a flash of something he wants, and then it happens. _Physical_ violence can be brutally abrupt.

"A high-tier demon, however, will usually be _far_ slower than our human Mr. Shiv, and its arrival and any attack is well telegraphed. Unless it's already been thoroughly rooted to this plane - rare, you may be thankful - then it's got to force its way out of multiple planes to get at you. The key is to not lose yourself in panic that a multi-dimensional horror-beast is about to take your spine for a jingly bracelet, it's to be aware and ready that for up to crucial _minutes_, it's going to be chugging through those planes like molasses. If you're lucky, they're also going to change directions like a man in one of those ridiculous dinosaur costumes everyone seems to love on the internet."

"_You've_ gotten hit by demons before," said Fitz, frowning at a handful of recollections.

"Fitz," said Loki in the kindest, gentlest voice he had, which was also a promise of threat if the young man continued down this path. "Hush it."

Fitz, locked on course, didn't notice. "Right, but I'm worried if we end up in a non-generalized situation where even you could be wounded, what chance does someone else have then?"

Loki inhaled and then held onto it for a moment, with his eyes squeezed shut and a hand coming up to pinch at the bridge of his nose. "I wasn't aware I was holding a Q&A. In fact, I believe I specifically forbade it."

"But-"

"The _point_ I am trying to make is that if you are not equipped to deal with that situation, you don't freeze like a rabbit, you take this opportunity to _ruddy-bloody-run_!"

Fitz blinked.

"If you _are_ equipped, you get yourself the hell out of the way first. If you are not alone and need to engage directly, you're going to want to be _aware_ of what your companions are doing, lest you end up pratfalling into each other heading towards chosen targets on the demon. Which we'll get to!" Loki's eyes were open again and he was giving his best, if fangless, glare. "May I continue with my prepared remarks?"

. . .

_Now_:

By the time the demon finished boiling through the planes and began its lunge towards Harkness, neither she nor Loki were standing there anymore. Loki, frankly used to this sort of bullshit, was on his way to the rear with a spell at the ready that would, for a moment, turn the magical charge around the athame in his hand into a handy-dandy tail-removing slicey-boy made of pure energy. Harkness, meanwhile, being the sort of person who stays awake during the most boring presentations and who might even take notes during the good ones, had juked around the other direction after watching to be sure Loki was off along the other one.

She figured once the tail was off, Big Ugly was going to be _much_ less interested in her for a moment or two, opening up an opportunity for an interesting game of magical ping-pong. Using the demon as the ball. She had a wind-up ready to go to hit it in the neck when it whirled on Loki. What might be a neck.

It was vaguely attached to the head, anyway, she figured.

Aggie still flinched when the thing screamed through the planes in affront, the bloated, sickly tail flying off to land in the gutter. Being not entirely corporeal, the tail 'melted' into generic New York sewer sludge, the venom hissing away into harmless vapor. A spindly set of claws whipped out at where Loki had been standing, catching empty air, and then staggered when another jolt of electric power hit it right where Aggie wanted it. It yowled in refreshed agony, nothing at all like a cat, whirling back towards her.

That gave Loki his chance to jam an icicle the size of a construction pylon into the open wound he'd made seconds prior, _really_ offending the thing. The demon, as befit its place as a higher sort of monstrosity than some of the lesser evils, wasn't a stupid beast and punched towards Harkness while also trying to smash the annoying bug of a jotun behind him. It only took off the bumper of a Lexus for its trouble, but it was, in Loki's opinion, a bit too near of a thing.

. . .

_Then_:

"So that's some of the basic glyphs you might see in the wild. Do not confuse them with the runes from the prior segment. Now, back to my prior point. Canceling a demonic summons is a tricky affair, particularly if you are busy trying to not become demon kibble at that same time. If you are not magically inclined, you look for physical tethers to the spell. That's where you'll find your chance to disrupt the situation. If you'll examine this useful diagram on my whiteboard-"

"That's Agent May," blurted a surprised voice in the back.

Loki paused to recollect himself before continuing, now in what he hoped was the back half of a too-long seminar peppered with far too many interruptions. He inspected the drawing, realizing the questioner had a point. "Specifically, that appears to be Agent May roundhouse-kicking a sorceress in the face. Now, an enemy spellcaster is typically an integral tether during a summoning, and likely to be the most common type you'll encounter. Interrupting their work - be it a chant, stonework, ritualized dance or what have you - can be a touchy endeavor. If you are not a caster yourself, you open the chance that the spell could backfire in dangerous ways, or other unintended consequences. However, assuming that you are magically neutral, it's still probably a better shot than being eaten-"

"Did _you_ draw that?" Another voice piped up from somewhere else in the small auditorium, sounding far too curious.

"No, be silent." Loki shot a look out towards his audience, selecting possible suspects to harass later. He hadn't drawn it, actually, he'd delegated the job and didn't remember to whom. Apparently that person had some artistic flair, and a sense of humor. "To reiterate before the interruption, and to underline my next point: When in doubt, regardless of your training and inclination, go for the summoners as soon as possible."

. . .

_Now_:

Harkness easily avoided the demon's crushing strike. Not as young as she used to be, she wasn't inclined to dance around the thing for an hour the way Loki cheerfully might. Her dodge got her within ten meters of the closest Chthonic summoner, a spindly young man chanting the same horrible phrases over and over in disconcordant tune with the other six standing cultists.

Loki, meanwhile, had the demon busy with another strike of ice, mostly vamping for time until he got a chance to work through the summoners closest to him. Based on previous advice, Aggie knew there was a risk something could go iffy as the summoners were taken down - backdraft magic scorching the remaining summoners alive, possibly burning her and Loki for collateral damage, or a briefly untethered demon getting a free rampage, etc.

On the whole, though, Aggie knew she agreed with the general gist of Loki's recent seminar, and, all her magical ability aside, she went for efficiency in this case. She cold-cocked the young man upside the head with a fist that had, in fact, gone through basic training with Agent Melinda May. _Then_ she added in a quick-whisper shield spell, to prevent any backdraft.

Oddly, there wasn't any. The young man dropped like a wet handkerchief and the chanting increased among the other six-about-to-be-five. "Oh, come _on_," Aggie snapped, returning her focus to the demon back on its way towards her. She dodged its lunge as Loki did something out of her view to another summoner.

The spell holding the demon on this current plane rippled painfully across five summoners, their faces wrenching in unified agony, but still held. The demon, now fully warmed up and ready to get on with its promised lunch, was getting faster.

Loki grit his teeth, the athame going bluish white in his hand. This wasn't out of his control yet, but the godsdamned thing hadn't gone down anywhere near as fast as he liked, and having a caster force _that_ interwoven wasn't the sort of thing drugged-up generic cultists could normally pull off. Wong had been right so far - these weren't ordinary fanatics. Now Loki had to dig in for a _real_ fight, which was the sort of thing he tried to avoid and which he honestly hadn't been looking for so soon after breakfast.

He rather hoped Wong was on the way with backup by now. It would make this a lot easier.

. . .

_Then_:

"So I hope I've made it abundantly clear. Your mundane, non-magical kit for dealing with a demon relies on a good pair of shoes, a willingness to punch anyone in the face as hard as you possibly can, and prayer. Not to a god, mind, because they're seldom of any ruddy, timely use, but that _someone_ useful has received your emergency call and is on their way ASAP. If you _are_ appropriately trained, see above, and also keep banging on the emergency line until the situation resolves."

"If we don't have any of that, no one shows up, or you can't get the demon unsummoned or whatever?" Mack spoke for the first time, his arms crossed against his chest. He'd taken in the entire seminar with the same furrowed-brow look of thoughtfulness that he specialized at. It was a running gag that Coulson wanted to get him appointed as official Director of SHIELD in his place, and certainly, he had the temperament to put up with that level of crap.

"Then you're fucked," said Loki, with absolutely no inflection beyond the blunt truthfulness of his words.

. . .

_Now_:

No one was showing up. Loki had managed to elbow another one of the summoners in the face while playing keep-away with a monstrosity that was not only becoming more physical in certain awful, fetid ways, but was becoming even _faster_ _yet_ as it began to fully align with the plane it was on. The summoners were down to four, and had the presence of mind to begin shuffling back out of active combat range, which was going to make it even more difficult to get rid of them.

It occurred to Loki, as he dodged a gargling, acidic maw set inside the palm of one of the limbs grasping for him, that while _he_ was no slouch at dealing with demons, this was also not the first time this group had worked in concert to wreck someone like himself. There was also that clear intimation that _something_ _else_ was slithering under that human skin, something old and experienced enough to help carry these dark magics along, and it would be _nice_ if he could get a chance to focus on that, but no, here came another set of claws followed by a gasp of demon breath that smelled like a deli dumpster in July.

"Where the hell is Wong?" Aggie sounded more than a little agitated on the other side of the thing, flinging bolts and chains down as fast as she could manage. She was also visibly wearing down, which was another problem Loki was trying to not worry about right then.

The obvious guess, of course, was that something else terrible was happening, holding up any assistance to them. It was a guess he didn't want to say aloud, because then it might become a fact. "Help is coming," he said instead. Only he growled it more like a threat, suggesting that if help did not, in fact, arrive soon, he would be taking the matter up with an awful lot of soon-to-be-wrecked-gods if _this_ is how he finally went out after all the better nonsense he'd gotten up to in his life so far.

A minute later, as if some deity in the vicinity had finally gotten the memo, a dazzling shot of energy arced down through the demon's alleged neck, causing it to yowl in the high pitched affront of a small dog. It froze, giving the two agents a chance to take a necessary breath. The next shot hit one of the summoners through a lung, cutting off his chant and dropping him, gasping, to the concrete.

Loki decided this was a bad time to act surprised and got on the offensive, throwing everything he had at the demon while he had a chance to finally snap its tethers. "Get the rest of them!" he shouted at Harkness, who was already on her way towards the remaining three.

They sensed the change in their odds and broke, scattering, still chanting, but faltering at last. Another bolt winged a runner in the thigh, slowing them down until Aggie landed the followup shot. She froze the other two, chaining them harmlessly to the pavement. Loki wondered why she bothered as the demon finally began to fight against its impending disappearance instead of him, then remembered they'd wanted someone to question before this all went to literal hell.

Far too close to him, a flailing limb halted against the air and missed its shot, going translucent. A keening, ear-piercing whine knifed its way into his ears, making him wince until that, too, began to fade.

Loki cautiously looked up at where the shots came from once he was satisfied the demon was no longer any sort of threat. The attacks seemed physical as well as magical, based on the way the lung-shot one was wheezing, which wasn't how the Sanctums operated. "Thank you," he said to nothing, managing to keep any grudge out of his voice and erring on the side of polite.

A youngish man dropped from the balcony he'd been hiding on after the translucent hellbeast was fully gone. "Welcome," he said, slinging a crossbow across his leather-jacket shoulder. Absurdly, he otherwise looked like some garage band kid trying to bring goth back to the mainstream. Under the jacket was some unrecognizable club shirt, defaced with those illegible slashing branch death metal letters around what might have been a cartoon raven and interlinked with a handful of generically 'occult' symbols. The tips of his black hair faded away to the natural dark ginger roots underneath, and he had the sort of sharply-defined facial features meant to lure Peter Murphy himself back to the apex of the Bauhaus era. He stuck a hand out towards Loki without any ceremony, eyes down, but Loki could tell he was keeping watch on Harkness. She didn't notice yet, staying busy stabilizing the lung-guy, who slapped futilely at her hands. "We need to talk."

"A friendly chat?" asked Loki, couching a warning in it. He was tired, but not so tired he couldn't handle a human.

The eyes flickered up to his, a normal-looking russet brown. Loki felt a tingle off the man's aura, however, one that was far, _very_ far from normal. "Hopefully," said the man. "I'm Damien Hellstrom. And I know who sent the attack on the Sanctum."


	5. Chapter 5

5\. The Gang Gets Told

. . .

Loki studied Hellstrom, feeling Aggie's gaze on his back. She'd heard the name, too, and was on renewed alert. "I see," he said neutrally, piecing that together with the aura he sensed. "I've heard of you."

Hellstrom blinked, obviously not expecting that. His hand dropped, going unshaken. "Maybe you've heard of my fath-"

"No," said Loki. "Although I expect perhaps I have, regardless. The point is, you're demi-mortal. You've the stink on you." He turned to Harkness, who was back on her feet and coming towards them both. "This is the one your ancestors dealt with." He had no question in his voice, but he waited for her nod, regardless. There _had_ been a Hellstrom in her story, a witch-finder and monster-hunter who'd helped a long ago Pennsylvania woman named Fenna turn back an attack on a town that would one day become a roaring, unending fire - and the last place the Darkhold had lain before Strange's imprisonment. That Hellstrom had been left for dead or nearly so, when Fenna, in her last act of defiance, turned her murderer into an abandoned mortal.

"And _her_ ancestors were demon-bound." Hellstrom's voice turned surly, as if to underline the point.

Aggie glanced at him, then at Loki. She was the one that spoke, low and careful. "Are we heading for another problem?"

Damien flickered a glance at her, the brown eyes seeming to catch ruby somehow. "I'm only supposed to be here to help."

"Getting mouthy at me because of my great-great-grandmothers while you're dressed up like a boho reject is coming off real helpful." Aggie frowned, but no magic flickered across her hands to prep a warning shot. She kept her attack verbal, instead. "Is that what demon-hunters wear these days? Hot Topic buy one get one tees? Do you have one of those little vinyl keychains on your crossbow? I can see a dangly, what is it, Pusheen?"

"It's a purifying censer!" Damien snapped it, backing up a step and fully on the defensive now. Loki, always fond of the chance to be an asshole, began to flash a fang at the corner of his mouth in a feral, happy grin.

"It looks like it's from Supernatural."

"It. Is. Vatican. Silver."

"Sure, kid." Harkness, having learned some of the wrong lessons from Loki as well as the right magical ones, yawned.

"I am over _five hundred years old_!"

"Then grow up and quit letting Agent Harkness goad you." Loki turned back to Hellstrom. "You're still half my age, regardless."

Hellstrom had gone speechless.

Loki studied his whitened, absolutely aghast expression, satisfied that at least one fight today had been a spectacular rout with him on the victor's side. Potential alliance aside. "I am not of the opinion that we should be preemptively judged by our ancestry, Hellstrom. I expect, given a moment's thought about these implications, you might take my point with some diplomacy in the conversation ahead."

"If you've seen what I've seen-" Damien stopped himself, looking past the two agents towards something coming out the alley. "Why is there a cat coming over here?"

Loki turned to see Frej showing up late to the party, no doubt very well fed. "Ah. Would you do me a favor, kit?"

"_Mrp_."

"Our prisoners. You don't have to be too kind about it, I'm afraid I don't like them very much."

Frej squared away the remaining summoners with a pleasant lick along her chops, then continued to pip-pop her way towards Loki, slamming across his ankles with her rear arched happily in the air.

Loki turned back to Hellstrom, who was looking at him, and looking at the flerken, and then looking at him with what was either terror or disgust. "You were saying?"

"That cat had _tentacles_." Clearly there were a few things Mr. Seen-It-All hadn't seen yet.

"You get used to it." Loki gestured past Hellstrom. "You implied a chat was necessary after your help. I'm still thankful for that, rest assured, so we're not enemies. Yet. Now, I assume your message is about whatever else happened to the Sanctum while we were engaged just now, if not sundry other details. Let's go see if they're all right. We can _chat_ there."

Hellstrom didn't move. He continued to stare at Frej.

"Frej, if he doesn't move in three more seconds, swallow him, too."

"_Prrrrp_!"

Hellstrom moved.

. . .

Wong threw open the door of the Sanctum, looking freshly frazzled as the small team approached. "I am _so_ sorry we didn't get backup to your location. I owe you not only my personal apology, but a promise to do better another time." He pointed at Hellstrom. "We received a communication from this man who said he was on his way to you and I put my faith in that. I had Strange tied up as an observation post on our behalf. All he would have done returning to you is be in the way."

"Another full assault?" Loki could sense the echo of the struggle draining from the aether around them. It certainly felt like the danger had been extreme.

"Doubled. They seemed to see an advantage in your prodding elsewhere, tried to cut open our defenses. And damn near succeeded." Wong looked at Hellstrom, who seemed far more subdued now than his swaggered introduction originally suggested. "You were right. The assault was being staged from that office complex roof. We've routed them for now, and they won't find another place to dig in as easily, not with us watching."

"They'll come back. I marked down a couple other likely places you might have missed, but there's an equal chance they'll go underground. Metaphorically. Or literally." Hellstrom glanced past Wong to see the whisper of Strange's spirit. "I assume you've fully checked out my credentials by now."

"More to the point, your sponsor sent her formal notification." Wong nodded to him, then spoke to Loki. "We're going to need to fan out for further observation here, but I think we'll be stable meanwhile. Hellstrom here is referenced briefly in our files, so I was all right with him filling in for my sorcerers. His sponsor is quite well known to us, however, and I suppose it makes sense that she's choosing now to get involved. Come in, we'll explain."

. . .

"My _sponsor_, as Mr. Wong puts it, is a Victoria Montesi." Damien Hellstrom sat in one of the semi-sentient chairs Wong was cycling out for guests. He'd refused to hang his coat, so leather creaked occasionally against leather. He perched awkwardly, as if the chair might bite. "She's on the books as an antiquarian, works mostly out of Seattle. Has for the last twenty years. She may have gotten on your radar in the past, I don't know. She's never told me. What you guys won't find on a SHIELD database is that she's heavily connected to the demonological underground, mostly collecting and neutralizing certain _diabolus artificium_ on behalf of organizations like Kamar-Taj. And yes, to be up front as she told me to be, allowing the movement and sale of certain items to maintain her place in the business."

Loki took that in with a short nod, studying the youngish figure with an aura he was indeed pinpointing as approximately six hundred and fifty years old. Aggie remained on edge near him, a cup of Wong's ginger brew cradled in her hands.

Hellstrom looked back, clearly able to tell what Loki was doing, and uncomfortable with the silence. "She sent me with a warning that she was afraid would come too late, that she was aware certain known forces were about to make their move on the Darkhold. She knows the book is one of my particular hobbyhorses, too, so it was decided that I'd come to open talks on her behalf, or help out. Or both."

"How was she aware a faction of Chthonics were activating?" Aggie looked down into her mug, giving it a sniff. "And what's your connection to her? Sounds like another witch in your life, Hellstrom. Family always said that didn't seem to be your kind of scene."

Damien's face tightened, sharpening the angles of his face into something both arrogant and pricklish. "I'm a weapon, _Harkness_, it's not a matter of friendliness."

Loki heard her mutter something derogatory about pewter knickknacks and new age head shops, but she kept her eyes on her tea. He spoke up to cover any other remarks she might make. "Then it's good you're being open with us about who's wielding you, hm? She was right, it seems. Her warning was late."

"But appreciated." Strange wafted in to join the small scene. "There was a sincere attempt, and that matters in magic. The intent shapes future outcomes."

Hellstrom eyed the spectral figure. "Got you with the Pin, I see. Haven't seen a shackle like that in decades." He glanced at Wong. "I can have Ms. Montesi send a book over within the hour, it'll help you at least understand the spell." Back to Strange. "Is your physical form safe?"

"Supposedly." Strange pointed at the 'cat,' who narrowed her eyes up at him meaningfully.

"Aren't you about due for a relaxing bath in your own flesh?" Loki settled back in his seat, watching the ghost through half-lidded yet glitteringly hostile eyes.

Strange grimaced.

Loki rolled his gaze over to his flerken companion, his voice lilting like he was telling a good joke. "You know, you don't _have_ to. Unless you wish it. If he's rude to you, or ungrateful, or you simply don't feel like it, _I_ certainly won't judge you for letting him fade away."

Frej put her ears straight back, giving Loki the most judgmental look a feline had to offer. Then she looked away from him, her ears still flat.

Loki wrinkled his nose at her, taking the tone and then smiling, amused. "Oh no, _someone's_ been teaching you ethics. It certainly wasn't me." Then he tapped the curl of his finger to his chin. "Well, you still get to decide whether the recurrence of his body is tastefully presented or, well, _moist_."

"What does _that_ mean?" Strange glided closer, sounding freshly suspicious.

"Ask Frej."

Strange looked down at Frej, who made a couple of wet sounding gulps familiar to every cat owner, said owner usually realizing this at three am while wearing white socks, and Frej did this all while looking him in the eyes without so much as a blink. "Oh, god," said Strange, no idiot. He regathered himself. Then inclined his head like a maitre'd at a Michelin star restaurant. "Miss Frej, might I visit my body? Without, ah, a thin layer of hairball, if you would?"

She looked haughtily at the ghostly sorcerer, considering his plea with all the slow dignity she had at her disposal. Then she padded towards the stairs, glancing back once at Strange to bid him follow along. Clearly she wasn't going to do this part with an audience.

"_That_ she learned from me." Loki smiled, looking quite proud.

"The fuck," said Hellstrom, nonplussed.

"Anyway," said Loki, now uninterested in the sideshow. "I believe we were getting to Agent Harkness's questions. Why did this Montesi know about the impending assault? What's your investment here? And I will add a rider - why does she _care_?"

"Why she cares and why she knew are the same question." Hellstrom dragged his attention back to his audience. "This is about Montesi's father. He used to be a priest. He was assigned to the Vatican historical collections."

"Hoo boy," muttered Harkness, earning herself a shotgun glance. "Five dollars says I know where this is going."

"No bet," said Loki, grating the words with real, audible exhaustion.

"I don't happen to know the details," continued Hellstrom, flicking a glance at them both.

Loki flapped a hand. "But he turned to the dark side, or however you'd put it. He's a Chthonic loyalist now, obviously. The daughter knows because it's her business to know. Is that it?"

Hellstrom glared. "That's simplistic."

"I don't care. These family intricacies are the same everywhere. They're terrible and everyone comes out damaged by the end. It's a story I've heard before. If I feel we need details, we'll ask this Montesi woman directly. Can I expect we're building to that? That's the most common point of messengers, typically. An opening to formal talks."

Hellstrom's face rippled into a look of open and honest dislike. "I am not just some _messenger_."

"At present, that is exactly what you are. It's good and honest work." Loki resumed studying him with that dismissive, glittery stare. He knew he was testing the man, not out of mere dislike - although Hellstrom was already tilting hard into forgettably obnoxious territory - but because self-styled demon hunters were trouble unless one understood them clearly. Not that he'd known many specifically, but there were _types_ in such specialized lines of work. Demon hunters, bounty hunters, vengeance-driven searchers doing whatever. Jumped up people with things to prove, a head for danger, and some sort of tragic backstory to wrap it all up with a bow.

Hellstrom was already not remotely interesting in this regard. But that foolishness also too often created its own dangers. Was this man one of those common, witless ragers, or did he have a scrap of sense under the coiffed rockstar hair? It only mattered, honestly, because now it impacted Loki and those he'd decided were under his watch. Otherwise he wouldn't have given a rip. "So back to that other question. Where do _you_ come in?"

Hellstrom looked away, the lip still stretched in a sneer of dislike. "I have old, unfinished business with the Darkhold. I made promises to Fenna, and to others I've worked for. If so much as as a _scrap_ of that thing runs free, I don't get to rest. It's been my primary target almost since I was born. I hate it, like I hate almost nothing else. It's the shape of so much horror in my life, and in so many others."

"Oh, gods," said Loki, resigned and weighty all at once.

"What?" The brown-red eyes came back to his, reluctant and suspicious both.

"We have something useful in common." Loki sighed, slouching further down in the borrowed seat to highlight his sudden depression at the realization. "That's unfortunate." He rolled his head over towards Wong, who looked sympathetically back at him for whatever reason. He felt a tang of appreciation for that. "When the aetheric planes around us settle a bit, Wong, I think we'd best ask for a quick portal to Seattle."


	6. Chapter 6

6\. Take a Look, It's In a Book

. . .

They were children in a way, these newly sanctified helping with the rite. They were _his_ children, placed high in the eyes of their God, loved and loyal where the one born of his blood was not. Five of them knelt before the black marble altar, arms outstretched along the smoothed, stained stones, coughing out the barbed words the Book had taught them of old. There was no translation. The words were The Words, and in each syllable was a thousand screams of hatred.

Vittorio Montesi stood behind the altar, his arms outstretched to receive those screams in blessing, his eyes closed in equal rapture. He was bare to the waist, his thick Sicilian torso shaved for the ritual to come, and his thinning hair was slicked down with the sweat of exertion. The shadow of a beard still fought through the skin of his face as it did most days, hating it for long years where he served in white robes and with candles at hand, with this shadow stuck fast to him making him look sallow and dirty. He embraced it now, for all things ought be true to themselves in the primal dark. That other God had not loved him though all the other priests claimed that was the gift He had given all life. _That_ God had never spoken, never offered a hint of kindness when his prelate's hand drifted across the most ancient texts in the Vatican's collection. Was love found in silence? Vittorio began to question.

But something _else_ had spoken to him. In the other vaults, where heresies were kept for study or for what some archbishops considered more practical reasons - avoiding difficult questions about the nature of their faith and their world. He was young then, when the whisper first came from the tiny scrap of paper held in those secret rooms that had once been under his care. Not even a full page, not that much of a gift had the priests recovered. Some once-rubbish set aside when a greater work had been made. The Darkhold's leavings, its own heady children.

Vittorio was much older now, a once-hale man gone to unwanted softness despite his work. Still, perhaps that flesh would be useful today.

The attack on the New York Vishanti fanatics had not been a failure, but nor had Vittorio and his children yet succeeded in their goals. That part of the plan would churn on until implacable fate ended their foolishness, opened the way to the Book.

But now there were eyes. Unwanted, unexpected eyes. An old one, not of their world's magics, a young one, child of other betrayals, and _them_. His bloodbound outcast daughter, her churl, that hunter, and, no doubt, the Vishanti falsehoods themselves.

Vittorio kept the sneer off his face and refocused his thoughts on what was about to come. Their work needed greater strength behind it, and for their blessings, the tool had been with them all along. Now he but needed to weld his will and his flesh to it.

Two other 'children' came forward, men older than himself and whose skin was marked with faded inks where clothing usually hid them. Not tattoos, but the words of Chthon's priests, the black-blue ink used by the ancient ones when the temples still stood before the glory of the nighttime sky, alive again in borrowed flesh. These things that stolen scrap had taught them, renewed now by the full page that had been rescued from the Book by the Sisters before their capture.

These newer priests sang the blood-chant and helped Vittorio up so that he knelt upon the altar, his knees fitting into the faint grooves where others had been so many times in so many centuries. At the sight, the kneelers began to cry out in the old way, celebrating the form he was about to accept.

_Ia!_

_Ia!_

Hands slapped against the stones, cheering Vittorio, giving him adrenaline to feed on as the priests gave him water for his stomach's acid, and offered him the old leather strap to bite, which he refused. He was an aging vessel, but a willing one, and he believed that would keep the pain at bay. Ecstasy was its own opium, and he intended to open himself to that river as freely as the stones of ancient shores.

The priests stepped away until the Chosen came forward, her hands filled with the sacred page, and with the threaded needle. Of the thread, the tongue did not speak, of the needle, that cleansed bone, of the page, that refugee of the Book. Their guide, their link to their God. The page knew them, spoke to them, sang to them all, as it had done the day Vittorio freed it from the vault and fed it with the blood of a bishop as he ran away.

The Chosen stood before Vittorio and held the page to his bare chest. Skin to skin, the ancient text feeling as warm and alive as his own flesh - for it was as the fingertip of their God, of course. At her beckoning, the two priests stepped forward, gently holding the page in place as the Chosen began to work.

The needle dipped into Vittorio's skin, and then, up through the page, and he did not allow himself to scream even though the pain quickly grew into an opera of agony. The Book, the Darkhold would return to the waiting hands of these awful children soon, but for now, he himself would be bound in blood, a living vessel, offering himself up to carry the Word forward to that blessed day.

. . .

_Seattle, Washington_:

Wong's current trainee deftly dropped the arriving party off in a quiet alley, hiding them within the roars of the I-5 Express overhead and a river of busy cars whose occupants had turned ignoring anything strange into an art form as a matter of local survival. Loki's team had a few blocks yet to go on foot. According to Hellstrom, the Montesi Curiosities Shoppe kept a bayfront space not far from the historic piers and the less historic but economically important coffee shops. Five blocks or so. Not a bad walk.

However.

"Oh gods, don't tell me. It actually _does_ rain all the ruddy time in Seattle." Loki looked around, refusing to budge from the protective awning of the roaring expressway above. "Harkness, please call a cab or whatever they have here. Hipsters lashed together in chariot trains, I don't care."

"It's five blocks," said Hellstrom, unimpressed. "It's just rain."

"I'm wearing an Armani and I've done more than my share of time in inclement conditions, thank you." Thunder rocked the sky, putting a grimace on the thin, pale face before he smoothed it over. "Let's say I'm getting over certain minor but poignant emotional difficulties."

"Because of rain." Hellstrom snorted, unaware of his abrupt descent down Loki's personal survival rankings.

Aggie acted like she ignored the infighting. "I can get a couple pedicabs here in five minutes. Rain ready."

"Pedi- no." Loki shook his head. "I know what I said and I'm retracting it. Absolutely not."

Harkness didn't miss a beat, selecting a different app and hitting a button. "Fine, there's an Uber on its way now." She glanced up at Loki, having long ago picked a side and knowing that side could be easily buttered up. "Some local dude with a luxury car, looks like."

"_Thank_ you, Harkness."

She grinned behind Loki's back at Hellstrom at the sound of honest gratitude. He stared back with an unreadable expression, and for a second, Aggie felt as if she understood intimately how a young Puritan woman, perhaps named something unfortunate like For-God-So-Loved Purifier, would feel when some old asshole decided she was a witch deserving death and humiliation. Probably only because she hadn't wanted to marry his goatish son, the absolute nerve.

She narrowed her eyes at Hellstrom, realizing her dislike was probably a bit overdone and flavored by a bunch of unhappy personal experiences, but fuck it.

He reared back a little at the heat in her stare, his eyes widening. Clearly it indeed hadn't actually been that serious. Eh, maybe he wasn't that bad, she thought, perhaps he just liked being dramatic that way.

. . .

The Uber turned out to be a Lexus with a quiet young woman as a driver. Harkness got the sense she was a college girl using her family's nice car to pick up a few extra bucks, and made the mental note to tip high out of the cash she had. Loki seemed satisfied, in any case, and rolled the window down to take the scent of the city.

Aggie did as well, the way he'd taught her. The first 'layer' sprang to life in her nostrils, the fresh, salty press of the bay, coffee, jazz, and the thudding nearness, _nowness_ of hipsters and grunge. Under it were the roots, literal here, the trees forever threatening to crawl through the land and wrest their world back from the scourge of timber mills that had once thrived in the area. Under that, deeper, almost lost, were the ancient peoples of the lake, and their songs.

Old territory, then, where the land kept a living memory. A good place for someone who wanted to work quietly in the magical arts, who could slip by without notice, collecting their artifacts without stirring something in the currents.

Aggie frowned to herself, lidding her eyes mostly shut and trying to focus on the curio shop just ahead. There was almost nothing there. Just the lingering echoes of old books and more old memories. She fluttered them open again, caught Loki looking at her. "A shield," he said mildly.

"No calling cards sticking out for randoms looking for a hiding place." She looked away, a little disconcerted. It was difficult to hide auras from her these days. She knew where to look and found nothing. "Weird."

"Hm."

Damien was in the passenger seat, and he glanced back at them both, that faint look of mistrust glittering in his eyes.

Aggie leaned towards her boss, keeping his voice low. "When you said you might know who his father was, what did you mean?"

"Have you studied his presence?" Loki had a way of whispering that disturbed no air, when he bothered. If he was overheard, that was the point.

"I barely like looking at the guy."

"His aura is dull and hidden, but there's astral marks in place to cause that, those squared-rune spells. Like armor. I recognize a few of them. Abramalin rubbish, some theoretically meant to call angelic spirits, and some to bind the Dukes of Hell." He sounded unimpressed. "Local work, effective enough if you're attuned to such things, I suppose. I never had much interest in the sator square nonsense, it's Sudoku with magic."

She resisted the urge to elbow him. "So which Duke of Hell?"

"Ha-Satan," said Damien, cutting in and sounding annoyed about it. The car floated out of its lane for a second while the young driver made a sharp, inhaling noise. Damien looked at the girl, leaning back into his seat and turning on what Aggie supposed was some kind of boyish charm. "It's all just rock band marketing shit, sorry to startle you." He opened his jacket to show her the shirt he was wearing. "Been trying to break into the scene for years, but man, maybe I should go to Germany. There's still an _actual_ rock scene there."

The girl smiled at him, if a bit nervous at first. "Half my friends are still into Of Monsters and Men, so, um… maybe?" She looked him over, studying the thin shirt and what breathed, muscly and well-kept, underneath for a little too long. "Nice shirt, though."

_Some_ demons fit the profile one might think of when hearing that word, of course. Nicely ripped, particularly across the chest. Never skips leg day. Soft_,_ full, and flowing dark hair. A black leather jacket in place of tattered ebon wings. A broad but beautifully defined face, like a carved Lucifer too hot for Sunday prayers.

Damien gave their driver a brilliant, knowing grin.

Aggie rolled her eyes over to Loki. "I told you. He's Hot Topic shit."

"Ah yes," said Loki, knowing more than a few things about bullshitting your way through via the charm offensive. "But the youths still buy into it."

"See?" Damien gestured to Loki, his attention still fixed on the girl, who giggled.

They came up to a stop light, and she took the opportunity to give him another look over, this one a bit more intrusive. "Is that the name of your band? Reclaimers of…"

"Darkness. Yeah. I know, the sharp branch logos went out with the 90's here in the States, but dammit, Johnny - that's my bass guy, he blazes - still loves the look." Damien rolled his eyes with a self-deprecating grin. "We have this whole story, you know, like concept rock."

"Led Zeppelin!"

Aggie watched Hellstrom hide a music-lover's cringe at the error. Instead of being an ass about it, though, he recovered himself and said, "More like King Crimson? If you've heard of them. No big deal if you haven't. Anyway, so, we're all children of Hell in the band, but we don't want to be." He shot a meaningful look at the back of the car. "Because I'm the frontman, my father's supposed to be Satan. The one everyone's heard of, naturally. We don't say the devil, exactly, which is rules-lawyering it, I know. Anything to keep the moms off us. Our first album was all about rebelling against our blood while being true to ourselves."

"Reclaiming your own darkness!" The driver laughed, thrilled at figuring it out.

Damien leaned forward in the seat, his charm now on full blast. "You got it! Midnight Sons didn't catch, but _that_ meant something to us."

Him being that far forward meant he didn't see Aggie stick a finger in her mouth, pretending to gag. It was Loki who took the first shot with an elbow, giving her a warning look that, honestly, could have been a bit more sincere.

"So anyway, these two have been _really_ patient with us." Damien shot the pair in the back another look with some heat barely hidden behind it. "Maybe this'll be the time we can get a decent-sized label to sign off on us, and our next album won't only get sold out of the back of a van."

"There's a modicum of talent on display," said Loki, blandly playing along. "The rest is marketing and image deployment, which is, of course, our skillset."

"Wow," said their driver. "I'm so sad, we're almost to your stop. I'm gonna keep my copy of your receipt, though, so I can have it when you're playing Madison Square one day."

Damien laughed, charmed and modest both. "At this point, sister, I'll settle for opening for a Judas Priest cover band." He leaned over, sounding confidential. "But when you give me our copy, you better leave your phone number on it. Y'know. Just so I can keep an eye on you. But only if you're okay with that, of course."

She laughed, honest and interested.

"Gonna elbow me again?" whispered Aggie, after making the ugliest face she could, like an absolute child.

"No. That one's free." Loki sighed, then caught the sign they were looking for. He gestured at it, brightening up. "Look, Harkness, our refuge awaits."

"God, but what if Montesi is like this?"

"Then we run for it and leave Strange to his own devices. I can only take so much."

"I _heard_ you," said the ghost of Stephen Strange that had been sitting atop the car for all of this, riding unseen, for free. "You assholes had better be joking."


	7. Chapter 7

7\. Knick Knacks

. . .

Loki watched the Uber depart, realizing, with some amusement, that the girl had made absolute _bank_ on her fare. Aggie tipped, recognizing a girl just trying to make it. Damien tipped, and gotten the girl's digits for some future reference. _He_ tipped, because he knew they were all exhausting people to be around. And, last but not least, he was fairly sure Strange had dropped a small but lasting charm on the car to protect her from shitty drivers.

He shrugged to himself and resumed studying the old-fashioned sign hanging outside the curio shop. It creaked in the wet breeze, a heavy, stolidly real piece of bronze and treated mahogany layered with an intricate web of observant security spells. The door, painted a rich and leafy green, held the protections, the window was enmeshed with snares, and a display was propped up in its centre telling passersby that this month's curio club theme was clockwork automata, and that the proprietor had borrowed a rare piece from Venice for them to study. Along, clearly, with an example of Japanese karakuri puppetry, which was holding the announcement card and moving up and down in a slow but regular series of regal bows.

"Interesting," he said, studying the display, because it actually sort of was for once, and he finally permitted Damien, who had been fidgeting now for about three minutes, to lead them inside to meet said proprietor.

. . .

Victoria Montesi stood up from a heavy, gnarled-edged desk set in the back of the main display room and crossed to them with a casual, confident stride. She put her hand out to Loki after giving Damien a brief nod of acknowledgment. He took it, marking a firm grip uninterested in proving itself to him whether magically or physically, the well-made pinstriped dark pantsuit with a clockwork gear pin at the left lapel, dark auburn hair tied back with classic, sleek, disregard, and the open, sharply clever face examining his with an equal amount of study. "Madam," he said, accenting his natural Asgardian tone by way of marking his place as a guest in the house of another practitioner.

She released his hand and turned to Aggie, giving her a similar shake, and a similar study. Montesi studied Aggie's face a second longer than she had his, but then let the agent go and took a step back. "Agent Loki, Agent Harkness, thank you for coming. I hope Damien wasn't too strident with you."

"I was my best and most charming self, thank you very much," said Damien, crossing his arms against his well-formed chest.

"Then my apologies are in order," she said without missing a beat, endearing herself to Loki immediately. "Doctor Strange, I assume you're present?"

"Yeah," said the disembodied sorcerer, apparating a step behind Loki and then coming alongside. He inclined his head in a nod. "Hi," he finished blandly, assuming their host might not have enough magical attunement to spot him.

She studied his outline with a critical, if not worried expression. "Are you aware there seems to be a contaminant in the tip of the Pin holding you? Because I'm pretty sure it's going to be an exponential aetheric poison, if it's anything like what I've seen before. You're fine for now, there's only a trace of corruption at your breast, but when it flares, you're going to be on one _hell_ of a timer."

Loki watched Strange do a Broadway double-take. "Oh no," he said to the ghost with acidic cheer. "She's competent." He looked at Montesi, whose brows had twitched slightly at his remark. "Please forgive my tone, it is not intended to be at your expense. He still forgets that it was that very arrogance that scars every one of his days."

"And you don't?" snapped Strange.

"Oh no, I'm quite painfully aware, I just enjoying leaning into it on occasion," said Loki, without bothering to look at him. "As you're familiar with the attack, Ms. Montesi, and that I _suppose_ that at least one of the reasons we're here is so that this foolish goat doesn't fade into the void, do you have a suggestion on halting the poison? I don't like working on deadlines, they're obnoxious."

"If I can see his body, I can cleanse the contaminant. I can't remove the Pin, not without a trace on the one who put it there so I can find his sigil-work and unravel it, but a cleansing isn't difficult. Is it still in New York?"

"Oh no," said Loki. "We can arrange access anytime."

"I didn't see the cat come along." Strange stared at the side of his head.

"Frej has her own methods of personal transportation." He glanced at Montesi. "A flerken, not a cat. A multi-dimensional alien entity, and she quite likes a good ear scratching."

Montesi didn't so much as blink. "Well, we'll get that sorted in a little while, then." She waved at a doorway leading further into the shop. "If you'd like to follow me, I'll explain some things about your attackers that I hope will be useful. I want it made explicit, agents: I am _completely_ willing to help you, to the fullest extent of my abilities."

"This relates to those ever-wearying family issues Hellstrom alluded to, I assume?"

She looked up into Loki's eyes, somehow seeing past the sardonicism and realizing it held a real and pained familiarity. "Look, if I can get you close enough to Vittorio, all I ask is to help hold him down while you stick him with the knife."

Loki looked at Aggie, delighted. "Oh, I _like_ her."

. . .

Montesi took them past a couple of other semi-public display rooms and eventually into a scriptorium-styled workspace that wouldn't have looked out of place in one of the Sanctums. There were dozens of bookshelves holding an overflow of parchment sheaves and aging, bloated books, locked cases of knick-knacks exuding various auras that universally marked them as unfit for the general public, and several angled writing desks whose damaged and carefully repaired feet gave away their roots as having been liberated from actual monasteries. She swept past these and towards an antique conference table set close to the back wall.

"Italian?" Harkness, still a researcher and history wonk at heart, moved towards it and past Hellstrom with a look on her face that suggested she'd forgotten, at least for a second, what they were there for. "First half of the twentieth, isn't it? No. Nineteenth."

Montesi dipped her head in a nod, visibly impressed by the guess. "Made, I think, first decade of the 19th century. Saw a lot of combat in its career. It belonged to General Armondo Diaz, and I can date it to his time at Vittorio Veneto, 1918. I found it rotting in a warehouse in Rome five years ago."

"Holy shit." Harkness reached out and gently traced the edge of it with her fingers. "_That's_ a find."

"Thought it was a fitting piece for us today, if I was planning to go to war with my own family." She steepled her fingers together for a moment and watched Harkness study the desk, regathering herself, before collecting a neat arrangement of materials from another nearby desk. "So. I'm not going to waste your time with a long PowerPoint detailing centuries of internecine Chthonic drama. The New York Sanctum is still under attack, and Vittorio will be moving his next pieces into play before your people there can fully re-establish the peace."

She waved a hand to spread the papers in equally neat piles, a simple cantrip but an elegant one. "I've put together all my files on known cult field members working with Vittorio, all of whom you should be able to plug into the SHIELD database and track with this. This," she said, tapping a thick blue folder, "is a write-up on the styles of assault they like to use. If they go after another Sanctum, this will make sure they can't dig in like they have in New York. Funny thing about chaos cults, they get predictable about their tactics. These derive from the same forms of magical assassinations Chthonics have been using since before the sinking of Atlantis."

"Atlantis," said Loki, bemused. "I was under the impression all that was fairly overrated." He caught the look he got from, well, everyone, and shrugged. "If they mattered, they'd still be alive."

"They are." Montesi crossed her arms. "To be fair, and to the best of my scant knowledge, modern day Atlanteans are so isolationist as to be temperamentally compared with the Sentinelese. They do not want contact with the outer world. At all. The sole attempt to do so that I am aware of ended with extreme and unusually ecological violence. They have nothing in common with similarly reclusive countries such as Wakanda or Latveria. They may as well _be_ fictional for how well they've accomplished their hidden kingdom - and fortunately for us, modern day Atlantis isn't a focus here.

"Historical Atlantis is another matter, and I suppose you can call its influence on magic today overrated." Montesi sounded grudging at the admission. "There were only a few survivors from the continent when the cataclysm happened, and of those, they struggled for millennia keeping their religion and their dark rituals alive. You met one of those few, Loki. And saw him dispatched, if I was informed correctly."

He arched an eyebrow, curious.

"Varnae was his name then. He was among the first to try and bring the Word of Chthon into immortal unlife, and scourged not only the innocents of Atlantis, but other forgotten realms as well. In more recent centuries, atop a desecrated hill, he saw the book bound in flesh, by Chthon's command. He was a favored creature, beloved, maybe, and he became the first vampire known to this world."

Loki's lips had thinned, putting it together.

She smiled, but not happily, at his expression. "Yes. You met him, I'm told, as Count Vernei, an occasional benefactor to occult groups, including those Hydra offshoots that liked to study the old magics."

"And the last keeper of the Darkhold. Before I had a _scintillating_ idea." Loki was now looking away with a forcefully controlled expression. "But more importantly, you are correct. He is extremely, judiciously, and pleasantly, for my peace of mind, dead."

"Yet, as always, his ideas are not." Montesi pulled out a file from a pile by her left hand, giving it a once-over. "He kept plenty of acolytes around. Either to further his eternal work, if they were viable, or to make sure he had a steady supply of protein snack packs."

Harkness tried and miserably failed to hide her snort-giggle. It brought a slight smile to Montesi's face, which went away a second later to be replaced by a faint, fleeting look of sadness.

"He's the one who recruited my father." It was Montesi's turn to look away. "There was a scrap of early Darkhold material locked in the vaults of the Vatican, not a lost page, exactly, but more like a relic left aside from the original binding. Like an abandoned child. You know what that thing is like. Living, squirming, ceaselessly talking to whoever it can trap into listening. When my father… When Vittorio began to pay attention to it, several decades ago, he alerted Varnae's observers. Varnae gradually wormed his way into Venetian society, and then was permitted access to the Vatican libraries, where he met his target."

Montesi looked around until she found one of the soft old stools nearby, pulling it over to sit behind the table that had survived an apocalyptic world war. "He would probably tell it differently. That he was making his own decisions, that he was in control. Sometimes, maybe he even was." She stopped herself with a laugh. "Fuck. I said I wasn't going to waste your time. I'm sorry." She grimaced, staring down at her files. "I always tell myself it's not personal anymore."

"Ma'am, you don't have to apologize for anything."

"Hellstrom, shut up." Montesi looked up through a few strands of hair at the man, who gave her a look back suggesting this was companionable old banter. "Whenever you try to comfort me, I remember you're too flaky to be a dogwalker in Portland."

"That's unfair, ma'am. I might be flaky, but I got a hell of a good baritone in these pipes, and I never miss a scheduled show."

"Oh my god, he really _does_ have a fucking emo garage band," blurted Harkness to Loki. "It's not an act."

"Look," said Hellstrom, wheeling on her with a finger up and jabbing. "It gets me wherever I need to be on this planet without extra notice, I can move money around with ease, _and_ I enjoy doing it." He poked in her direction again. "It's a hell of a lot better than when I had to sell my ass around telling a bunch of psuedo-puritan shitbags I'd kill their neighbors for 'casting spells' and pray I wasn't going to get shorted trip fare because a scan of the town told me Father Puffy-Balls of Saint Gabriel got his tits in a snip because Mildred wouldn't let him feel her up after Sunday prayers, and I _damn sure _wasn't going to kill Mildred for that."

Harkness blinked, her head leaning back like a hot wind was blasting through a window and into her face. "You all right Hellstrom?"

"I spent _centuries_ in poverty because I won't be the asshole people want me to be. Holy and unholy alike. You know what, you think I'm _literally_ a witch hunter, that I'm aching for the chance to shoot you personally in the back." Hellstrom inhaled, the jabbing finger turning into an open palm. "And I get that's pretty damn fair from your perspective, Harkness, but from mine you're the latest living incarnation of someone who killed one of the few genuinely _nice_ people I've ever met. You're the only one of that family I've met in person, and I've obviously got some issues over it. It's not fair that I'm instantly shitty to you, and it's not fair you're shitty to me, but that's what happens when we've all gone through a lot of said shit, isn't it?"

"Wow," was all Harkness said to that, shocked into a deadpan.

Hellstrom took another deep breath. "So maybe, let's try to both start over, and we both dial the shit back a bit. And it'd be asshole of me to act like I didn't start it, so I'm going to say I'm sorry, and carry my part to help fix it." He finished by putting his hand out to Harkness, gently redoing his introduction.

"Holy hell, man." Harkness took the offered hand, gently, and shook it.

Hellstrom rolled his eyes up to the ceiling at Harkness's continued bland shock. "Look, Freud was an idiot, but the rise of psychoanalysis in the last century was a really good thing for me."

Loki, who still had not gone to a SHIELD-licensed therapist, kept his mouth shut.

Hellstrom stepped back and looked down at Montesi, who'd watched all this go down with a mildly baffled expression. "I'm very sorry for steamrolling your conversation, ma'am."

She flapped a hand up, dismissing it. "It's all right, nobody needs to whine about their families all afternoon. Including and especially me. I get the feeling we're all very sympathetic in this room, so we can skip a lot of the finer details. I'll sum up the Vatican situation with this - it was Varnae that coaxed my father to disavow his church. Vittorio started a family not long afterward, and an offshoot of the cult, in rural Sicily. I never knew my mother, she left when the going got too weird for her, and Vittorio kept her from taking me. Least that's what I was told growing up. I got out of the cult mostly by virtue of going to college here in the US, where he stopped coming after me when he realized I was far too 'tainted' to ever be of use to him and his demon buddies."

"Tainted?" asked Harkness.

Montesi found a reason to carefully study the handwritten tabs on her folders and reorganize them yet again while she answered. "You can take the Catholic out of the Vatican, but you can't take the bigot out of the Catholic." She looked up, her expression briefly awkward. "He could deal with my questions about the family faith, but not who I brought home for the holidays." She looked at her files again. "You would think a bunch of sadistic cultists wouldn't get hung up on shit like that."

"Oh," said Harkness, getting it. She gave a casual shrug, trying her best to be empathetic while not dismissive. "Yeah, I got burned out of my house for being a witch, so, people are still dangerously cruel and stupid even today in the year of _somebody's_ lord."

"Further, I find fanatics of any stripe to be not only illogical, but honestly, some of the most boring people on any planet," said Loki, helpfully. "So. Vittorio Montesi is leading the magical assaults in an attempt to further the goals of his God, who I personally hate so richly that we are all now instant fast friends in this room, and you will help us stop Vittorio. We've now their tactics in hand, giving us the ability to predict some of their future acts, and we are, I assume here for some next purpose. Once we fix Strange's issue - only the one, I'm afraid, if we were to try anything else, he might simply crack apart from sheer sundered uselessness-"

"Hey!" snapped Strange, who had been mostly studying the bookshelves through all this.

"I suppose we'd best get on with whatever you had in mind," finished Loki, smooth as butter.

"What I have in mind is getting that trace on Vittorio and the rest of his current loyalists. Not the throwaways. Your allies can use what I have to shore up the fight for now, but that won't solve the problem for long. To prevent further attacks, much less stop them from succeeding at any part of their goals, we need to find that core group. And to do that, I'm suggesting we have to go study their original anchor. It's like a wound in the earth, tethering them to the Primordial Dark. A rift. And I'm just not a strong enough magic user to crack through that thing and use it to find their hiding place." She nodded to the two SHIELD agents. "But I'm betting the two of you can."

Loki smiled, pleased by the acknowledgment. "Mark the maps and travel is an easy matter."

"More portals?" asked Hellstrom, looking uneasy.

"Well, if it's to somewhere otherwise generally pleasant, I was thinking first class for the main journey, then portals to the specific location." He continued to smile. "I always have someone I can bill. Where to?"

"Crete," said Montesi.

"First class it is!" Loki clapped his hands together once, delighted.

"Coulson will shit," said Harkness, cautiously. "This isn't technically a SHIELD job."

Loki waved her off. "He will _not_. I'll explain everything to him."


	8. Chapter 8

8\. Dead City Blues

. . .

Coulson, usually fair and mild under even severe duress, had not, actually, been all that thrilled with Loki's latest suggestion of top shelf travel and accommodations, and that had been clear to _everyone_ within earshot of the phone call. Including possibly the hair salon across the street from the curio shop. Loki ignored Aggie's knowing look as he hung up. But Loki, being Loki, got those four first class tickets from Seattle to Crete.

By sending the bill to Tony Stark, who would probably end up paying it by pure accident.

. . .

"I wish I could feel the breeze," said Strange, squinting his eyes against the bright sunshine pounding down on Heraklion Airport despite his state. "Is it humid?"

"There's no breeze, Doctor Strange. It's like a squirrel's armpit out here," said Hellstrom, sounding ragged just ten seconds out the airport's doors. "A drowning one."

"Could lose the jacket, Brendon Urie." Aggie, feeling much cooler in a flowery spaghetti-strap tank, flipped the top flap of her backpack open, waiting patiently until it somehow filled itself with a dimension-hopping not-cat. Frej, no one's idiot, somehow clearly got across that she thought international pet fares were obscene, did not care one whit for being in cargo, and was still highly annoyed that no one had realized there was a magical contaminant on Strange's body when she'd been lugging it around. She'd made her own journey across the ocean after Montesi's cleansing ritual. Now she curled up in the offered backpack with grumpy feline elegance, her ears flicking around like satellite dishes, picking up stray sounds and finding all of it irritating.

Truly, she'd picked the right person to force her own adoption onto. She and Loki were two dramatically put-upon peas in a pod.

Damien wheeled on Aggie, walking backwards with the group as they went to look for a quiet place to arrange their next leg of the trip. "First of all, Harkness, this jacket is my armor. It is my _life_. It is an original 1951 Perfecto 618, popularized by _The Wild One_ with Marlon Brando, and I bought it still fresh off the manufacturer." He ignored the dramatic eyeroll. "Mine has personalized sigil-stitching, and the liner was reclaimed from a no longer fashionable longcoat I had sanctified by the alchemist Fulcanelli in 1926."

"Uggghhhh!" groaned Aggie, sharing a look with Victoria, who laughed.

"And second, you just outed yourself. What's your favorite _Panic! At the Disco_ song? _Nearly Witches_? _Friends in Holy Spaces_? Come on, Harkness, tell your local confessor. I'm licensed, you know. I can provide last rites and everything in a pinch. And, if you need a pick-me-up, I've got all their albums loaded on my phone."

Harkness shot him a rude gesture. The Italian one, because, of course, when in Rome, you tell the locals how to fuck off in their own language.

Damien laughed, not taking offense. She no longer meant any, anyway. He jutted his chin at Loki's back, who was marching ahead and ignoring all of them. "There's a worker's bay past the cargo crates just ahead. Nobody goes there anymore because management made it non-smoking. Cleanest, quietest spot in all of the region."

"I'm sure that's an exaggeration," said Loki, adjusting his route. "Cameras?"

"I'll take care of them," said Aggie. "Thirty second visual loop. Long as you need."

"As a spell?" Montesi frowned at Aggie, curious. "Magic against tech is always iffy, at I thought."

Aggie gestured at Loki. "Yeah, but when your teacher can bounce illusions off fifteen different satellites and still fool a guy running a numbers station in Kiev, you pick up some pretty solid new tips."

Montesi nodded. "I suppose that makes a lot of sense. He'd have the practice, just based on the little I've picked up seeing Asgardians on the news." She stayed alongside Aggie as they watched the two men wander ahead. "You're an analyst when you're not providing magical backup, right?"

"Yeah. Where are you getting your info, by the way? Someone in SHIELD is going to have a coronary if there's a major internal leak. Even if it's magical. Probably especially."

Victoria shook her head. "All above board. Hellstrom does most of the legwork, whether he realizes it or not. And I have some friends in the other Sanctums. If I ask fair questions, they'll get me an honest answer."

"Not easy to make friends with Kamar-Taj out of the blue."

Victoria chuckled, hearing the question buried in the statement. "I did a couple favors for Strange's predecessor, ones without any strings. That got me in the door. The old mystic had a soft spot for people trapped between order and chaos. I was up front with her about Vittorio, which mattered later when I realized she probably already knew everything I told her." She smiled, sad again. "I miss her, she was unique. She loved the potential in imperfection."

"Never had a chance to meet her." Aggie sighed. "If you ever meet Wong face to face, though, instead of by magical instant message, I'll vouch for him. He's great."

"He sounded like it. What's your analytical speciality? History, I assume?"

Aggie nodded. "I dual-specialized in American colonial religion and history, with a second in proto-Germanic faiths." She rolled a wry glance over. "Makes it easier for people to not give my family's library collection a weird look, _and_ it's been useful for dealing with the job."

"Proto-Germanic faiths?" Victoria glanced at Loki's back.

Aggie pitched her voice low. "There's just enough enough regional crossover. Thor is making an effort to get the family on better terms before a lot of shit changes in Asgard. So guess who's out there trying to corral confused agents when he shows up loaded and carrying a goat under one arm?"

Montesi blinked at her.

"It's actually pretty sweet of him to make the attempt. Loki won't admit it but his brother's making real inroads. And a drunk Thor is still a polite Thor."

"But the goat?"

"It's a mead-goat."

"I-" Victoria shook her head, sharp and startled. "What?"

"You took the alien cat without a blink but I'm confusing you with a goat." Aggie resettled the backpack with a grin, getting an annoyed _peep_ for her trouble. "It's something to do with honoring their warriors, living and dead."

"Huh. Maybe I'll ask you to explain it to me some other time." Victoria paused on that for a second, watching the men make a turn. They followed while Aggie prepped her spell. "I focused more on the Mediterranean and what most people would call pseudo-history, plus a degree in taphonomy, but my master's was in library science."

"Your curio shop looked like it was definitely run by someone who knew what they were doing." She laughed. "I'm gonna have to come back to Seattle for your club meeting."

"Thanks." Victoria's eyes softened a bit. "I love the old automatons so much, they're not magical but they're _so_ interesting. I got to hold the Antikythera Mechanism a few years ago, it was beautiful."

"_No_ shit?!"

"Ladies." Loki was waving towards the empty space. "I apologize for interrupting, but I need a fix on where I'm putting us. You indicated it was a small island fairly nearby, but there's a lot of those."

Victoria turned her attention to him. "Pontikonisi." She pulled her phone out and opened up a specialized map app, handing it to him. "You can see it and all of its location data there - if you pull that folder, you'll see the ley nexus tags I put in." She watched him frown at the drab looking rock. "I know, it looks like nothing. For most people, there _is_ nothing there. Just a rock." She inclined her head with a grin. "But I know where there's a little cave, and what it opens onto."

Loki took that in with a silent nod, memorizing what he needed and handing the phone back.

. . .

_Some drab rock off the northwestern shores of Crete_:

"Well," said Hellstrom a minute later, looking around his feet at the gently sloping sheets of grayish brown slate and other generic mineral. "Sure is a rock, all right."

Victoria Montesi hit him. Not all that hard. He took it like a champ anyway, grinning like he'd just laid a good dad joke instead of a barely tolerable one. "The cave is along the western shore. It won't show up on satellite pictures, but we should have no trouble spotting it."

Loki seemed like he wasn't listening. Aggie watched him, then realized he was focused intently on something unseen. She centered herself with a whisper and prepared to follow what he'd sensed, only to get slapped in the face with the sensation of something vital, unearthly, and somehow disturbingly, pulsatingly _alive_ under the stone. She took a step back, almost stumbling. "Shit!"

Victoria turned her attention to them, surprised. "You can both feel it?"

Loki was still fixated on whatever it was. Aggie shut off her senses and knocked her head clear with a hard shake. "Hard not to! That's raw chaos somewhere down there." She looked at Victoria. "It doesn't bother you?"

"I grew up around eddies like it, so, it's strange and unpleasant, but also familiar. It's fucked up, but it's a bit like visiting home." Montesi looked around, ensuring they hadn't been followed. Then she looked back to Aggie. "You shut down your abilities?"

"I lock my doors when I don't need what's in the room, yeah." Aggie shrugged. "I like having some control over what I'm experiencing. It helps." She didn't elaborate on that, instead reaching out and carefully touching Loki's arm with one finger. "Are you okay?"

Loki inhaled, audibly, then looked down at her hand as it withdrew. His expression had turned deadly serious. "I have a suggestion, which will not be accepted, but I must stress that I am completely sincere about this."

"What's that?" Montesi came up alongside Loki, studying his expression.

"We leave. Now. We find an alternative way to resolve Strange's displacement, we burn the cultists out of their homes as best we can without this anchor, and when there is a moment's peace, we return with one of the undersea weapons I can acquire from a not entirely reputable dealer of my acquaintance and we blow what sleeps under this rock into another dimension entirely. And then we go eat pancakes or something else ridiculous, whereupon afterwards we never discuss any of this ever again."

She blinked at him. "I think I'm sympathetic, but it's not really an option. Nothing will work out like that unless we use what's here to root everything out at the source."

"I know," said Loki, and it sounded oddly mournful. He turned away. "I was only wishing." He gestured towards the cave, his voice returning to its normal dry drawl. "Let us go and see how awful this will all truly become." He looked back at them, now mock-conspiratorial. "Tradition dictates the worst."

. . .

They went down, passing through a carved entryway that seemed natural at first but then up close its planes and angles and small, frantic scratching revealed no natural thing would have shaped it, passing into a tunnel with no sense of distance, only that the air grew hot and damp and choking, passing into dark places lit by strange fungi and the lingering trace of some awful jest of magic, onward and down, down, _down_.

Loki was silent on the journey, letting Montesi lead. She'd taken this path before, a few times, and while she was clearly not comfortable, it was a horror she knew, and so, could face well enough. Aggie began to feel the oppressive bleakness and roiling hell against even her firmest defenses and began to shiver, now and again. She caught Hellstrom's reddening eyes once, and he nodded in empathy. Chaos was a living thing down here, and it was not welcoming them, but it was, also, intensely _aware_ of them.

They lost track of time. The clocks on their phones tracked it like normal, but it was easy to check and see only a few minutes had gone by, or ten, or an hour, at one point, they stopped in quiet worry when it seemed to have become full night outside according to Montesi's phone, only to realize they had been tricked and it was now only noon. Still, the path down continued.

The light changed and made them pause. First that there still was _so much_ light, now growing in intensity but with the tint of it dull and orange and flickering in a way that had nothing to do with any natural fire, but also that it seemed to be following them. Teasing them.

There were sounds in the tunnel with no source and no description, save that a few were like scratching on iron bars and others were like faint, distant titters, and finally that fell away into an oppressive, choking silence as the _presence_ of whatever slept under the dull stone grew closer.

Montesi paused as the tunnel suddenly began to widen. "We're almost there," she whispered. "One of the gates to the old city. A border town, in a way. It doesn't open to Atlantis any more, it can't, like I said."

"But where it does open to…" Loki barely breathed it.

She nodded. "So let's hope it isn't open. It shouldn't be, and I like to think I would have sensed it before now. The anchor the loyalists are using will be dug in near the center of the city." She looked around at them. "Deep breaths. The architecture is… pretty unsettling."

. . .

In another time, what the tunnel opened onto might have been awe inspiring, full of life and full of strange magic and a stranger people. Instead, the orange light faded away, replaced with a sickly greyness, like a light obliged by rote physics to fill the space but with no color or life left within it. It dripped along the broken architecture and created dull shadows so that the cracked ebon domes and torn once-silver pillars looked more like an old corpse whose last scraps of meat had begun to slough away into that last fetid fluid. The streets were no longer paved, though occasional blocks carve with unintelligible runes picked up through the mud just far enough to catch unaware feet.

It was silent, so silent. The group knotted in closer together, not out of new fondness but because at least they were alive and were thus each other's only comfort. Frej had burrowed deep into the bottom of Aggie's pack. Sometimes she could feel the animal tremble slightly, as uncomfortable as any of them. But she stayed, which took no small amount of courage.

They wended their way deeper into the dead city, and as they passed some broken shell of a home, a single sound cracked through the gaping city. A sonorous ripping deadness, like a hollow tree imploding into a mud-lined hole. Aggie gripped Hellstrom's arm, startled, sharing a look with him. There _was_ something here, after all. The ghost of some massive, long ago _thing_ that shambled around the ruins, looking for something that would never return. She inhaled and let him go, looking at Montesi next. She mouthed her question - _what is it?_ \- and received a shake of the head in response. Unknown, unknowable, but not quite forgotten.

And then they passed into once had been something like a city field, an octagon space lined by mostly-intact silvery pearl pillars. There was grass here, dead and black but still there, and the cobbles remained, stained by sacrifices over centuries. A single building looked fairly whole, the open windows of its face gawping mindlessly down at them, a ruined door for its narrow teeth, and inside it, more of that dead grey light.

"I'm not going in there," said Loki with more heat and firmness than he'd shown in hours. He jerked his head towards a space of grass gone flat near the entrance. There was a flicker around it, some unsettling shimmer that wasn't of their plane. "There's an anchor, yes? Buried within that pocket of chaos."

Montesi nodded. "It can be pulled into our space fairly easily if you have the right kit. When Varnae was alive, he was always, in a way, close to here. He was their gatekeeper." She looked at the group. "He always had the right blood on hand. Within him. On him." She sighed, sounding dour and disgusted. "It's still doable without that, but you can see they've been using sacrifices to make up the difference. We shouldn't have to, before anyone worries."

"How so?" Loki glanced at the body-shaped imprint in the grass.

Montesi nodded to Aggie. "Because we've got one of the descendants of the old Chthonic sorceresses with us. There's other options, but I wanted to be up front. That would be the easiest. If you're willing."

Aggie sucked in the corner of her lip, assessing that. "You know, I'm not going to be surprised, but if I find out I'm about to have to donate half my blood to get this going, I'm going to be very, very pissed off."

Montesi surprised them all with a small laugh, an open defiance of the dead place they stood in. She reached out a hand to Aggie, trying to comfort. "No, god no! I'm not going to do a damn thing to feed these assholes. I never have, and I'm not starting today. All we need is you just… being here, having that bloodline and that bit of genetic memory inside you. Your friend should be able to wake up the old magic and find our trails without hurting anyone, and I can help show the way. Without empowering anyone. Without endangering you. I promise. That's the accidental backdoor here - who your family is _matters_ to these idiots. What you chose to be will keep you safe."

Aggie nodded. "All right." She squinted at the space where the hidden anchor was. "Let's wake up some more ghosts."

"You're certain you're all right with this?" There was genuine worry in Loki's voice, and he was on edge in a way Aggie hadn't seen since… well, not ever, honestly. Around those few magically inclined agents under his watch, he maintained a certain stoic distance. Mentorly and not quite cold. For their sakes, he explained. He was never buddy-buddy as a rule, and even less so as a teacher. Open concern was out of character enough to make her pause and consider her answer again, just to be sure.

She wondered if the stories she'd heard about Chthon's near-emergence in New York had held a Loki wrapped tight more like this. She suspected so, and found that was a better warning of what was ahead than a sign that said something dramatic like 'Abandon All Hope.'

She looked up at him after quietly confirming her decision again and gave a short nod, figuring that if the worst happened, she was amidst a good group to deal with the aftermath. "If my bloodline can be useful and not in the way these assholes want, hey, I'm all for that," she said, taking the backpack off and gently passing it and its sleeping cargo over to him.

He continued to study her without staying in her way, the worry etching deeper into his face, giving him an age that looked strange and dignified and distant, no longer that unsettling timelessness he favored, and she wondered, before stepping closer to Montesi, if he was right and it was a mistake to be here.

It probably was, of course. It usually was. There were always more traps. It occurred to her, this would be a fine place to lay one.

Aggie Harkness took a deep breath, and decided she'd rather face it all head on, and her possible damnation be, well, damned.


	9. Chapter 9

9\. Everything Old is New Again

. . .

Under Victoria's guidance, Aggie moved within about her arm's reach of the shimmering place where the sliver of chaos had anchored itself into dead Atlantean earth. She then closed her eyes and began a series of basic centering exercises - breathing methods similar to those used in mundane meditation sessions and anxiety therapy. She let the sense of her physical body fall away from her magical self, stepping out and away and above her flesh, seeing her body stand there without her within it, the shell of her now balanced lightly on its own.

Easier to sit to do such things, of course, but everyone loves a showoff. And this should be simple, otherwise.

Astral, tethered close, and feeling free despite the now-pulsating sense of endless doom that came from this shard of old Atlantis's past, she turned towards the chaos anchor and saw everything within it, the energy from her lifeblood suddenly pulsing around her, opening her eyes further yet.

She saw the old city when it was new, bustling men and women thronging the green and lively square, speaking and singing to each other in languages she'd never heard before yet, tantalizingly, recognized from recurring dreams buried deep in her brain. Unable to resist, the call of her blood singing that same song, she reached towards the anchor point, feeling the past flow over her arm and beyond her, towards where the others waited to track where the path she meant to find would lead.

"Harkness!" Loki's voice sounded far and wee, too thin to extract its intent. She was busy watching a man as dark-skinned as granite sing pure healing magic towards a pair of coppery children laying on the grass. They had fallen from one of the pearlescent pillars, tall ones they had been climbing on a dare only to find the sea ivy no longer supported their combined weight. Their legs lay oddly for a second, the signs of a bad break, and then, as she watched, the children pulled their healed legs underneath them. The dark man stroked the hair of one of the still-crying boys, and that lyrical, haunting voice told them there would be no more pain today.

On that, he would be correct. Doom lingered, and she couldn't scream through time to warn them of what was coming.

"_Harkness_," whispered someone else. She didn't know who, she wasn't listening. Her sense of self was washed away by the sea. She was watching a small group of robed men heading towards the building close to her. Their white robes were lined with a dark, organically haunting red, and under one of the hoods, she saw the bleeding eyes and knew it was the cursed old priest who had gone into the dark and come back with some unnatural gift from the primordial god who lived there.

Varnae, the High Priest of the Southron Seas, looked towards the ghost of her, as if he could somehow see her, thousands upon thousands of years later, and he flashed long, sharp-looking fangs in what was not a smile. He said a word, and it sounded like _ii'tchyala_ and in her ears she heard the words _dark_ _daughter_ and all the meaning that phrase held.

The past flowed cold around her arms, turning into tendrils that yanked and pulled her inexorably deeper - _harkness_ \- into the past, dragging her along as the dead but living priest ascended the steps - _agatha wikker harkness_ \- and then the screams started within the building that was not quite a temple and not quite a library but utterly one of the beating hearts of Atlantean magic-

HARKNESS

-The sea rushed in as the earth sundered itself open, and with it, in the depths, was something grand and awful and alive, and Chthon's myriad gimlet-hell eyes saw her whole, and it too named her _ii'tchyala_ in a boiling, terrifying voice, and in the darkness, the songs of the people were replaced by the joyful screams of those who could not die. She screamed, too, as the death of that old shade of Atlantis went on for hours. Decades. A century and more as the bones were lost to the unending deep.

And she screamed.

And she screamed, until she fell back into herself, and then halfway to the ground, as the tendrils of the flood that went where Chaos lived became an unknowable number of arms surrounding her.

"Aggie!" Montesi was practically tugging her shoulder out of her socket, the sensation real and painful and, oddly, a grounding sort of comfort. Magic tingled along the fingertips digging into her arm.

"Ow," she mumbled, realizing her head was virtually in Loki's armpit. It hurt to talk and everything seemed still so far away. She turned, finding only expensive fabric blackness, and reached up an aching arm to swat the flap of the jacket out of her way. "Fuck," she rasped, sort of understating her feelings, still not quite sure where or when she was, only that she was exhausted and furious and extremely confused.

"Harkness," said Loki. His hair was dangling partly down across her face like a veil. "Look at me. Look at me right now."

She slapped at him, her ears still full of the rushing ocean. He grabbed her wrist and she growled at him before blinking away her own feral hostility, realizing there were still old, cursed pieces of her trying to sing along with the destruction of the old city. She shoved them away with all of her remaining internal might, then opened her eyes wide, staring at Loki, the horror of what she'd seen still crawling against her skin.

He stared back, then glanced at Montesi's drawn expression. His voice was terse. "She's fine. Nothing's burrowed inside her head."

"Are you sure?" Damien's voice was behind Loki.

"I'd know. I'm quite well acquainted with Chthonic possession." He reached down and gently pried her left eye open wider anyway, studying again. She didn't struggle, seeing his iris glitter as he finished his clinical stare, a flash of redness hidden within his own inhuman eye. He must be very worried, she thought distantly. Nausea struck her, hot and licking at the back of her tongue.

"I am _so_ sorry." Montesi's voice was shaking. "I am… that wasn't supposed to happen. I've seen them do this rite dozens of times, and… and… I thought it was supposed to be safe. Routine. _Fuck_."

"Not your fault," she rasped, trying again to get her feet under her, and her stomach's contents settled back into place without any more lurching. God, but she hated vomiting, especially in front of anyone. She'd rather feel sick for hours than simply get it over with. "I thought there might be a trap set for us. I walked into it. Figured it would be better to see what they're trying to play at."

"There was no trap, Harkness." Loki's hand was still on her arm, making sure she was steady. He waited until she was standing under her own power before he continued. "At least, nothing our hostile little friends left for us. Nothing mortal hands might have designed was in wait." His voice turned grim. "But of their master's making, that I don't know. I can't know what that _thing_ would want. I can tell you it came quite close, and I've no doubt it looked at you. Perhaps us as well. The veils are far too thin here."

"I've never… the only one with any mark of old Atlantis that I ever heard of being here was Varnae." Montesi was rubbing at her temples with both hands, looking exhausted. Lines deepened in her face, scars of the guilt she was wracking herself with. "I didn't even consider that a variant connection would cause variant results. It's chaos, so why didn't I guess that?" She pulled her hands down and dropped them on her hips, looking away and cursing in fluid, vivaciously angry Italian.

"It's all right. It's not your fault." Aggie coughed, realizing she was trying to rub warmth back into her arms. Like she'd almost drowned in that ancient, frozen water. She forced herself to stop and took her backpack back from Loki, seeing the little feline head pop out to look at her with narrowed, very possibly worried eyes. "Look, did you guys at least connect with the anchor while I was flipping out? Find that trail?"

"No." Loki stepped away from her, and the words were bland and without disappointment. "There was a flood of raw power, like a living thing. An eel. Nothing to hook into. The anchor itself dissipated within seconds. If we could call anything about this a trap, it would be that their anchor was marked to avoid any interference. Like what we intended." He sighed. "For a few seconds, we saw what you saw, I think. The old city when it was alive. All of them dying as the sea and the evil beneath it betrayed them to ruin."

"He called me daughter." She was still rubbing at her arms. "Varnae. He saw me. He called me a daughter of their dark faith."

"That's impossible," said Damien, sounding like it very much was and he just didn't want to deal with that fact. "It was only a vision, you can't connect across time like that."

"Chaos has its own rules, though it's amiss to call them _rules_, exactly, and I wouldn't be so sure of what it can or cannot create." Loki finished his half-turn towards Damien, casting a glance at the old temple. "Especially in a place so dear to its darkest incarnation."

"Did you see?" Aggie asked Loki. She jutted her chin at the old structure. "Any of that? What they did?"

The way his face pinched said that he had, and with quicker eyes than human ones. "I expect this wasn't the heart of what killed that old version of Atlantis. Just one pillar of many. Toppled by others like Varnae, leading those sacrifices and burying this place under water and stone. I hope to not discover there's more of them alive than we thought." He glanced at the temple again, and that pinched, unnerved look crossed his face. "I sensed what powered the anchor well enough, Montesi. In the worst case, I can likely come up with a trace without risking the draw of such grim attentions, given time. But away from here."

"Good." Montesi still looked greyed out. "If this had done nothing but annoy some ghosts, I'd be even more furious with myself." She looked at Damien. "We're going to get back out of here, and then I'm going to ask you and Harkness to-"

"Wait," said Loki, his voice cutting low until the single word snapped off like a snake's bite. He stepped backwards towards the other three, putting himself between the three humans and the aching maw of the old temple. "_Wait_."

Aggie could feel _something_ coming off of him. Some pure emotion. Rage, maybe, or fear. Or worse, both. "You said there weren't any traps."

"I did. Not for you. Nothing human or human made. And perhaps I was wrong, after all - but not about their targets." Loki's voice continued to rattle and she watched his shoulders tense in the way that said something was about to get a knife in someplace terribly vital. "Montesi."

"Yeah." Cued by him, she now sounded equally on edge.

"Whatever happens next, get yourselves out of here as quick as you can. Use that guilt of yours to feed a proper shielding spell if you must, it's the only decent use for what's undeserved. In the worst case, well, there's a few other contingencies I've in mind."

"Loki, worst case of what?" Aggie felt her gaze lock onto the old temple, sensing something there. Or not there. Like a void, a hollow space in reality that shouldn't exist. She reached out and put a hand on his arm. He pulsed cold through all his layers of fabric, cold enough to belie all his illusions. He was pretending at nothing. She couldn't keep the fear out of her voice. "Hey."

He pushed her further back, still staring at the old temple. The emptiness just beyond the door seemed to flicker, a dull yellow light pouring towards them like a river of diseased urine.

No, not a light. Fabric? She narrowed her eyes, unable to see through the old, dusty gloom of the dead city, not wanting to move closer to find out for sure. There was nothing there. Then there was _something_ there, or it had been there all along waiting for this second. It was wrapped in saffron and rot, a dead king rising amidst his dead kingdom, victorious nonetheless.

The ache in the world pulsed, impossibly hollow, and she watched, frozen, as a long, bluish-grey hand inked deep with those unreadable and awful letters of chaos clutched out at the once-noble marble entrance to pull itself forward into the deadlight. Ragged fingernails scraped through a carved leaf, ink bleeding out from the torn cuticles and smearing its way down to the ruined earth. A breath came, soft and shallow, and buried within it was a clacking, horrible laugh. "Oh, my funny, pretty prince. My beautiful liar. You've come to see me once again."


	10. Chapter 10

10\. A Clear and Present… Loki?

. . .

The secret-keeper's face blazed forth from the blackness, that ruined mockery of Loki's own visage. The mad jackal's grin split open as lips, cyanotic blue and a far cry from the vital jotun darkness that hid under illusion, tore and bled black, oily ink down its chin, pooling and splashing within the torn yellow hood. "Have you been watching _Westworld_, funny prince? I've no idea what's going on, I must confess, but it's all _SO AMUSING_!"

Loki reared and stumbled back as the voice became a rattling, shrieking roar of merriment, his arms still flung out behind him to protect the others from this shattered mirror of himself.

"The one that was, the one that is, the one that is apparently back for the next season. The man in black. Did you see it? He tore apart himself and all his others he once thought he loved, thinking the truth would lie inside his blood and circuits, that everything was real, that nothing was real. That the maze was not for him, and yet it was. We've all got mazes inside us, my prince. _That_ part is the truth inside the story's lie."

The secret-keeper lunged forward, a bare and bleeding foot slapping wetly onto the stone steps. The rest of its body was swathed, blessedly, in that stained yellow robe, hiding whatever other horrors had been done to it to make it so gaunt and wracked with cheerful agony. "Oh, but I do love that show, I _do_." The keeper's dulled eyes, once a bright and lively grey-green, rolled up and around in deep sockets as it gurgled in delight. "Clever humans and clever lies and silly stories. Do you know what words he found written in himself? The show didn't say, but I know. I know. Do you know what his circuits read out to him?"

"You're not real," said Loki. His throat had gone bone dry. The words, which should have been firm and commanding and full of magical truth, came out in a horrified croak. "You've never existed."

"_Made in China!_" The keeper's broken laughter pealed through the dead city at its own stupid joke.

"Jesus Christ," whispered Harkness, her voice a cracking icicle.

The keeper's whirling eyes stopped and fixed on her behind Loki's arm. "I don't know him," said the horror, bluntly. "Do you? Could you arrange a meeting? Oh, no, wait, you're a child of the damned, just like the rest of us!" More laughter, merry and rasping and increasingly alive.

"You're not real!" Loki forced the rasp out, making it harsher, trying to give it the power it needed to hammer against the impossible thing. "I ended your time, you're not any part of me. You never were, you never will be. You're not even a ghost. You're a _lie_. The punchline to a jest that _never happened!_"

The keeper went very still, and it put its thin, tattooed palms together as if about to gently chide a child gone awry on a busy playground. Perched atop the steps, it looked down at its living, changing mirror, and hate was written clearly on every inch of skin in a thousand, million dead languages, all of which called a scream a song. "A nightmare, my pretty prince, doesn't have to be real to hurt you." It licked its lips, the ruined voice turning fluid and warm and somehow horribly, grotesquely seductive, the bloated echo of Loki's own dryly amused purr. "And I want to hurt you very, _very_ much."

"Montesi, get Harkness out of here. All of you, get out." Loki shoved backwards again, making himself as much of a shield as possible. The thing would not pass him, not for blood or soul. No piece of himself would harm those under his watch, not like this, not ever again. His mind was screaming at him, illustrating all the ways this was impossible, impossible, and the coldest, most tactical part of him said yes, but this is chaos, and chaos loves impossibility itself.

"Not without you." Harkness sounded wild and frightened, and not a little like this was somehow her fault for touching the live wire of Atlantis's corpse.

He noticed that, clinically, and made a mental note to feel touched by it later, assuming there would be a later, and that he would still be sane enough to feel such things. "Yes, without me." Loki didn't turn around as he said it. "Get out. Track Montesi's father. If this much chaos is coming to life here, it won't be difficult for much longer. They'll light up like a rock concert."

"Oh, it's so easy to find what wants to be found." The keeper's eyes lidded, as if daydreaming. "A daddy who wants the _ideal_ of what his child could have been. Their love. Their future reborn in flesh. That's not hard to find at all, when he cries out. I know all about disappointed _daddies_." It licked its lips, knowing full well where to press for the greatest hurt. "I'll give you that for free, daughter, because your _mommy_ would have liked it."

"Silence!" Loki's roar finally came back, and he half-lunged at the thing as Victoria choked a horrified half-sob behind him. The keeper didn't move, only watched Loki's halfhearted attack with glittering interest. Loki bellowed at the humans behind him next. "Get out of here!"

"Do you know the name of your mommy? Do you know _why_ your father told you she left you?" The drooling started again as the thing spoke, rapid-fire. There were words on the surface of that oily ink, too, and all of them were the names of the dead.

"Don't listen to it, get out." Loki heard no movement behind him, and tried to not scream in frustration.

"_Chthon!_" It came out in a happy sing-song. "Chthon's cursed child. Oh the woe and irony! Daddy's daughter had a monstrous mommy! Father loved our sacred monster and he loves a hypocrite's love!" Another rattling cackle. "You're _ours_, child, and your father is ours, and we are all Chthon. Oh, Hellstrom!" It began to clap, sardonic. "You're so quiet, I didn't see you there. Do you know, _I_ remember the day you were bo-"

Loki, not above the straightforward solution when it was demanded, finally socked his awful ghost in the face with the full force of an angered, if small, frost giant. The left side of its skull sunk bonelessly inward like a plastic Halloween mask, the mouth still cackling, and he took a scant, dangerous second to whirl on the three humans. Their faces were drained of blood and they seemed frozen to the ground as its face reformed. "Angst later, and run now."

"It's telling the truth." Montesi sounded hurt and hollow. Aggie had dug her fingers into her arm, bloodlessly trying to move towards the distant cave that would get them the hell away from this hellish scene.

"Because I know when truth hurts the most. Riddle that later, and do what I said. Before it starts talking again." Loki narrowed his eyes, hissing the rest of his threat to goad them into action. "Harkness, you know I never stop once I _really_ get going." He snapped a hand at them, a royal dismissal. "I'll find you later. If I can."

Aggie mouthed his name, but some spell on the three of them finally broke. She pulled Montesi's arm back, hard, liked they'd done to her coming up from the nightmare of Atlantis's death, and at last, they fled.

. . .

The keeper didn't give chase to the fleeing humans, and Loki didn't bother to wonder why. It was him, of course, that the thing wanted. To crawl into his shell and become real, when reality had been so forcefully denied it. He heard the rustle of that awful robe behind him and he didn't turn around. The thing wouldn't simply knife him and skin him. That wouldn't be good enough for its thirsty revenge. "Now it's just us."

"It's _always_ just us, pretty prince." The rattling little clack. "You don't let anyone else inside you. It's so nice of you to leave such room for me. Cold and hollow, just how I like it. No empty nesters in the House of Asgard." More bony laughter.

"Gods, you're less funny than I remember." Loki, cold through to bone and soul, turned around to look himself in the face. Seeing the etched words of chaos rippling under the skin, seeing where bone had been chipped off those high cheekbones, seeing the pestilence that had replaced his blood. It could have been him. "I think your jokes somehow grew worse."

An affronted hiss came from the keeper. It was supposed to have been him. So long ago. The one that didn't change. The one that didn't exist, save here, in a place where the impossible now peeked through to hunt the daylight.

Some new emotion rippled under his skin, and he couldn't place it at first. It was almost like relief, but not quite. Now that the humans were gone, the fear was draining away. So it wasn't fear. The keeper was a reflection of the worst parts of his potential, and he could deal with that well enough. He'd done so before. So long as no one else was harmed, no one else paid for the breakage he left in his wake. Not again.

No, Loki realized, slightly awed at just how much things had changed since all those years ago, standing in the _between_ with nothing in his hands, and his regrets and his past chasing him. It was pity.

. . .

The sun was low but golden warm over the abandoned sea stones. Aggie had her eyes squinted against it as Montesi sobbed against her shoulder. She'd held it together for as long as she could, leading them in a run back up through the ruins and the tunnels, a shield blocking out the deadlight and the laughter of that Loki-shaped thing haunting behind them, and now, embarrassed and exhausted, she needed somewhere to fall apart. Aggie could do that, at least. She stroked the woman's hair as she had done her own mother once, when her grandmother had died and Aggie couldn't find tears to share. It wasn't her way. Aggie fell apart only privately, although once she'd done so far, far too hard.

Hellstrom stood at the edge of the rock, staring at the sliver of the moon and giving his friend what privacy he could.

"I knew," said Montesi through a wave of tears. "I think I always knew. I always knew I was a monst-"

"Shh," said Aggie, cutting her off. She put her chin on Montesi's shoulder, looking at Hellstrom's back. "Don't call yourself that. All my best friends are monsters and we're supposed to be working on self-care. We're not ready to reclaim the word, yet, though. We're adopting 'emotionally damaged demi-humans' for now. What night's best for you for the talk therapy circle? I'm gonna get us together twice a month. I'll plan around your Curio Club."

Hellstrom snorted a bitter laugh.

"Hey, Damien, you got the number of your current therapist? They take emergency calls?"

The laughter lost its bitter and became genuine. Then he sobered up. "That's not fucking funny, Harkness."

"It's hilarious, Emo Phillips."

Montesi continued to sob, or at least that's what Aggie thought at first. Then she realized her shoulders were wriggling in a confused mix of tears and new, stress-ball exploding laughter. Aggie squeezed her in a big hug, then pulled back to look at the red, stained face. "Listen. Loki is still under us facing… I don't know for sure what he's facing. He recognized it, and it was one of the most awful things I've seen so far, but he's going to fight it and get back to us. That glorious dickhead, my boss, is the _biggest_ asshole I know, and he's not a monster. I know that becoming one is his worst fear. He spends all his time being a perfect jerk so that he's _never_ the monster he could have been, and we all know he's fronting at this point, and if you tell him I said that, I'm a dead woman."

Montesi coughed on an inhale, listening.

"My family line goes straight back to a soul-sold demon sorceress that fucked with the wrong goddess, and now we only ever give birth to girls and have the craziest nightmares and wake up like a shot every single time something hellish happens in a five thousand mile radius. It blows, to be frank. I can get any magical plant to grow anywhere, but _wow_, have I got some mental health downsides. We're not monsters in my family, we work at it, we choose to, but you can't tell my dead asshole ancestor that. It's not what she wanted of us. She wanted to keep living, and we're all cursed because of it."

Montesi bowed her head, her face masked by tear-dampened hair.

"Your friend over there literally gets to call Satan _daddy_, and the most diabolical thing he seems to do - besides that weirdly kinky thing-"

"Honestly, Harkness, fuck you!"

She didn't miss a beat at the startled, laughing sound of Damien's affront, pushing a few strands of dark hair out of her way so she could look Montesi in the eye. "-Is dress up like there was a clearance sale at Halloween City and shoot demons in the ass."

"Harkness!" It didn't have the same goofy fire as last time. Damien started laughing harder, wild and clearly shedding a lot of his own stress doing so.

Montesi started doubling over with the giggles. "It's why I like him. He makes an effort to be good. He's a great shot." The giggles increased in intensity. "And while he's not my thing, he's also got a pretty decent butt, too."

Aggie gently patted her on the back with a grin on her own face, watching Hellstrom shoot them two matched middle fingers. "I'm sorry we're picking on you. I shouldn't."

The rude gesture became a flap-off. "Nah, I get it. Stress. It'll kill you." He rolled a look over to her. "Still better than the stares I used to get from priests that acted like it was the worst thing in the world to pay a scumbucket like me to handle their local demon problems." He shoved his hands in his jacket pockets. "All the money the Vatican has, you'd think they'd pay their exorcism bills on time." He jerked his chin towards Montesi. "You remember, the year we met. How I'd bitch and bitch about them."

"And I understood. I gave you crap about it, but I understood. My father, when he was still… He would talk about the cheapness they had about certain things." Victoria dabbed under her eyes with the crook of her finger, settling down. "I paid on time."

"And bought my loyalty with that. Also, with the whole not being a jerk to me thing." Damien sighed. "I'm not very good with emotional shit. My therapist tells me that all the time, I don't show a lot of what I feel. I mean, that's fair. _I_ start crying, hellfire imps crawl up from Dad's asshole to lick them off my face."

"Is that true?" Aggie squinted at him.

"No, but I had a nightmare like that when I was young and had just found out who he was, and it stuck with me." Damien flapped the corners of his jacket for emphasis. "We need to get off this rock. For your jerkass friend's sake, and, well, probably for the sanity of the planet."

"We still don't have a trail." Montesi finished a final sniffle, dragging her hair back into a ponytail. "I was completely useless for that. I thought it was a good idea."

"Don't start this again. It was. It's not your fault chaos is what it is." Aggie poked her in the arm, gently. She looked at Damien. "I can portal us back to the mainland here without any problems. Loki always leaves a trace of his to follow back in emergencies, so all I need to do is power that up." She frowned, thinking. "I say we go back to New York. We've still got two of their guys locked up. By now, Wong's probably gotten _something_ out of them, and I want to know they're doing okay. If we can get _anything_, some wisp of power, Damien and I can smell it out and chase it."

Montesi's face smoothed over as she began to churn through the rough plan. Focus always helped settle out her stress, thought Aggie, seems the same for Victoria. "I've got a few inert artifacts in the warehouse that I pulled out of one of Varnae's estates. If Loki was right about chaos sparking to life so strongly, they might give me a couple clues." She pulled in the corner of her mouth to chew on it, as if something was buried in her thoughts and trying to be found. "Maybe. Maybe something else…" She looked up with a shake of her head. "It'll come to me. We'll think it through again on Crete. Just to be sure."

Damien squinted at the fading sun, then looked at the two women with a frown. The first sparks of a portal began to form as he glanced at the saggy backpack over Aggie's shoulder. "Hey. Where's the cat?"


	11. Chapter 11

11\. Jackson Galaxy's Got Nothing on This

. . .

A cat does not think like a human does, of course. Their thoughts are raw and emotional, guided by what they see, what their bodies tell them, what their memories retain, what they need. Not to be confused with simplicity, their inner lives hold a different kind of richness that humans try to interpret in human ways, usually drilling it down to 'kitty want cuddles?' And probably, kitty does.

A flerken, meanwhile, is not a cat, does not much think like a cat, and further, doesn't think much like any humanoid in the general galactic region, either. Their minds are anchored by a meta-dimensional sense of space and self, a necessary adaptation caused by the pockets within their fluffy little tummies, and they study the rules of this meta-reality in a paraphysical way that would require tools beyond, say, a slide rule, a Cray megacomputer, and maybe some hard drugs. A flerken could do your physics thesis for you, but it would knock it off the counter after it was done. Not because they are cat-shaped, but because it was boring.

Or so they would tell you.

Flerkens also can't speak like humanoids do, although they understand most verbal languages _very_ well. Like felines, they make their body language do a lot of the work for them, and find the resulting game of charades amusing, if not exactly efficient.

Frej was proud to be a model flerken, part of the first new generation in over a century. Her mother - as much as flerkens had mothers, exactly, most gendered language being not up to the task of properly describing those rare flerkens who chose to lay a massive brood of eggs versus those who did not - was ecstatic to watch her kits travel far and wide, as she herself had once, collecting new knowledge to add to their hidden stores. Many of Frej's sibkits roam the beautifully strange homes of alien shamans, and not a few watch over the other Earth Sanctums. The understanding of magic is a new thing for flerkens, and they are _lapping it up_.

Frej, for her part, is delighted to have been matched for adoption with the recalcitrant, sorcerous prince at her early age. The Loki, as she thinks of him. He is funny and interesting and quite good at scratching that one spot behind her left ear that she keeps missing with her back leg, and he does not yell at her when she is gripped by the sheer joy of the zoomies and ends up flying across the curtains in SHIELD's lounge. She can't help it. It's a zest for life that takes hold when she's figured out something new about etheric voidphysics, her current hyperfocus. The humans yell in her direction a bit, or grumble without real heat, but the Loki only sighs and still gives her a piece of stinky fish stick treat later, her one guilty pleasure. Then he reads his books, and she reads along from over his shoulder.

Someday she'll attempt a gestureless magelight cantrip out of one of the books he teaches a few humans from, which will probably startle the hell out of the Loki, but then, maybe it won't.

Now the Loki is currently in trouble. This is not abnormal at SHIELD, and Frej is already used to it, much like how she's already half-forgotten about the cursed human body she's lugging around in one of her smaller pockets. But the humans woke her up again with their trembling and running, and she, tasting the sweat and tears on the air, dropped out of the backpack before they got into the tunnels to figure out for herself what the flerk was going on, and why some of that fear in the air was coming off of her prince-partner.

She pads her way silently back towards the temple-place, where she had stirred just enough to sense the waves of a chaotic dimensional time-rift ripple across her feeler-hairs. It had just been an echo, one of those harmless burps that happened when such rifts popped up, so she'd ignored it and gone back to sleep. Until the screaming started.

It doesn't take her very long to get back to the Loki, because she hurries and cheats her way along the trail the humans left by popping through dead dimensions. She must be careful about this, though, as the chaos rift has left a few worrisome hazards around. One of those hazards is just inside the temple itself, and she plops herself on her butt at the edge of the town square to study it from a distance.

It is _interesting_, in its way. There is nothing there, talking to her Loki. Rather, a capital letter Nothing is interacting with Something, and there is a flicker of some real reaction between the two forces. It is like antimatter, only not quite as volatile - although Frej thinks she might be wrong about this - and it is _growing_ the longer the Loki engages with it.

She mews quietly to herself, braces, and turns herself inside out. She does it safely inside one of her own invisible pocket dimensions that is now _also_ turned inside out, so an onlooker won't scream about the horrible tentacle'd mass that's sitting there calmly minding her own business, and this lets her extend certain subdermal organs that are impossible to explain.

Nope. As simply as a flerken could put it, there's not a barfy thing to be found. The Loki is talking to empty air, which is not a thing the Loki does, as a rule. Therefore, despite her own readings, there is something else afoot. She simply doesn't have the correct tools evolved to detect it. She needs to borrow some.

Frej folds herself back into cat-shape and licks a paw while she thinks. Making a few quick decisions, she picks her way closer, keeping low and out of sight behind some ruined blocks of marble, just to be safe. This gets her within the Loki's magical sphere of influence, which she can detect and tap into, due to her newly trained sensitivities. Here she _purrps_ softly to herself again and uses what she can sense to 'see' what he sees, and there things get, as she would describe in a future flerken-language thesis on chaos-fundament physics, kinda wild.

The Nothing is still technically, physically, nothing, but Frej can now clearly see where the chaos-wound is still bleeding layers of never-was and always-dead into the here and now, and a big heckin' portion of it is shaped like a badly tattoo'd meth-addict version of the Loki, and it is tied directly to him through fragile-looking strings of multi-dimensional probability. She sniffs the air and realizes they are not fragile at all, they are soul-threads knotting up inside that antimatter-like reaction hovering between the Loki and the nothing-echo, and that this is all actually _extremely bad_.

Frej utters a few catlike chitters to herself, which is actually a kind of coarse flerken profanity that would make her mother tongue-bathe her down for an hour or three in punishment, even though that's who she learned it from. Frej has done a lot of reading with the Loki, but undoing soul-knots created by Chaos is quite a few grades past where she is. It is not something she should fuss with, but the Loki is also too forcibly invested in his awful encounter to be aware of how the thing in the yellow robe is using the Loki's own soul to actually create itself on this plane.

The Loki is currently feeling pity for the yellowy thing, and she is close enough to sense it. He's right to, Frej thinks. It is a mewling and pitiful recreation of the Loki that she likes a great deal. It is a version that thinks it is stronger than ever within the grasp of Chaos, but is actually so pitifully weak that it must feed on the soul to even be a whisper. It lies, and it lies to itself, and it would never change any of this. How odd to find something so firmly made within chaos. Perhaps that's the joke on the Nothing-thing, if it becomes real. That will be its victory, and its punishment by its masters. To be rigid and ruled, and never free, a creature of chaos given the worst fate in all the world - relentless order.

And if it gets its way, it will subsume the Loki entirely, replacing him in her happy reality. The Nothing-thing will not understand her love of stinky fish treats, and it will not read magical books with her. While Frej was already not pleased with what she was seeing, _that_ possible outcome simply cannot stand. So she has to do something to help save the Loki this time.

_Her_ Loki.

It is the first time Frej has conceptualized him in this way, and she decides she likes it just as much as she likes the humanoid, and also, she chitters more dirty words about the thing trying to mess with him. He would appreciate that, she thinks. He finds such plain language amusing.

Frej has no tools at paw, and not many resources to come up with a good plan. Her Loki is being seduced by his own pity and vocal dismissal of the Nothing-thing. He is, critically, _not paying attention_ to the undertones here, and he is being goaded to be sure they are missed. So she has one idea, and it's a good, basic, always reliable idea, but it will require very sharp timing on her part. If it works, she will also have to find a clear way to apologize to him later.

She is going to have to wait for a moment where her Loki's fixation on the awful thing can be broken, and then she's going to bite the absolute _shit_ out of his leg.

. . .

Wong spun towards the booming sound of something massive hitting the Sanctum's shields, his jaw set firm to be sure the young acolytes at his side didn't panic. They were exhausted and on edge, nine young men and women hurriedly brought in from London to help shore New York's protections. Hellstrom's information had bought them critical hours of rest, enough so that the creaking shield yet held - but not for much longer. Not against another salvo like that one.

The Chthonics had found another angle of attack, and felt freshly spurred on by _something_. A change had come into the air, but there was no time to worry about the group attempting to track down the heart of the problem. Wong stretched his senses, checking the growing cracks in the protections, and even at the sight of the sparking holes where energy drained like waterfalls, he kept his face practiced and still.

"Who's left?" The acolyte sounded nervous. "I'm drained. Sophie's down. Can we get anyone else from Hong Kong? Where's Master Howl?"

Anyone that could be spared from Hong Kong was already asleep in the magically reinforced barracks hidden deep behind the staircase. They couldn't risk leaving the other sanctums unprotected. Not only would their attackers find a way to New York easily through them, but there were other factors to consider. Other things to protect. "No," said Wong, evenly. "No one left from Hong Kong."

"Tibet?"

Wong shook his head once, sharp. Kamar-Taj had sealed itself. _Been_ sealed, only partially for the same cause, and more for its protection as local tensions rose. China's government was pressing heavily on Tibet this season, with new, deliberately public whispers of poisonous political attacks on the Dalai Lama. Wong knew personally that there were other probes hidden behind it, ones meant for them. On his advice, the Hong Kong Sanctum had granted subtle protections to people protesting authoritarian influence in the independent city. This act had drawn them notice, a risk that had been deemed acceptable, but now caused certain pressures on both Hong Kong and Kamar-Taj itself.

Wong fought to not feel guilt or worry for this. And now they had fewer resources for backup than usual. An unusual sensation prickled inside the back of his throat. Fear. He didn't care for it, fear was meant to be understood, accepted, and then compartmentalized. Fear was not exactly useful in dangerous situations, and their situation was now full-blown perilous.

He was the Sanctum's final guardian, its drill sergeant, its wall. He did not panic. He needed backup, and a _lot_ of it, and in a real big hurry.

What would Stephen do? He frowned, considering the question as the aftershock of the attack rumbled through the foundations of the Bleecker Street mansion. Stephen Strange would do something grandiose and stupid, and it would work, and it would, Wong had to confess, look really, _really_ cool.

He had an idea.

_Oh_, yeah. That would do it.

"Come with me," he said to one of the acolytes.

She followed him as he began to hurry off towards the back rooms, where artifacts and secondary libraries piled up in layers of multiplied tesseracted space. "What are we going to do?"

Wong flashed the young woman a grin over his shoulder, a light perking up in his eyes. "We, young Sophie, are going to throw the book at them."

. . .

There are a _lot_ of books of magic out there, you have no idea. A mundane person can trot on down to the last remaining big-box franchise in the US and hit up the New Age section for a few harmlessly pretty tarot card sets and some cheesy books on vampires throughout the years, sure, but the magical libraries of Earth are a whole other bookbag. There are independent collections, naturally, of which Victoria Montesi had a decent one and would shortly be magick'd back to for a hurried study of her own.

Loki's collection, for another example, is _absurd_. Not only does he have a sick set of stacks overflowing out of his room and the corner of the SHIELD library that's gradually becoming less of a corner (and he's started taking over a storage room next to the in-house auditorium, because as he explained to Coulson, what's the point of lugging books back and forth for every ridiculous seminar he has to hold?), but he's got the knowledge of the Nine Realms at his fingertips and permanent access to Omnipotence City, where almost every single thing ever written has a copy shelved somewhere within its planet-sized studies. Loki's library, however, is an outlier and should not have been counted.

But just behind that are the various interconnected libraries of the sorcerers of Kamar-Taj. They don't just have the Tibetan fortress and the three major Sanctums, it must be noted. There are warehouses and storehouses and borrower's pop-up libraries and strange nooks meant for specific audiences - one in London is reputed to be run by a particularly reclusive angel and their demonic mate, of all things - and much, much more. Aleister Crowley would puke in envy to know this of the secret world, and he _should_, because he was an absolute piker when it came to real magic.

Wong, having served for years as Kamar-Taj's head librarian, has the keys to them all. And he has a PhD in Library Science to back him up.

Now, books of magic have their own method of organization within Kamar-Taj's system, based on the dangerousness of their contents, the book's individual level of sentience, its inherent power, etc, but to avoid a hefty discussion of finer details, it is obvious that Wong knows all of this and acts accordingly.

Wong led the young acolyte to a special door within the New York Sanctum. Within it was a computer terminal that let him, with his singular credentials, access every single in-network facility. He ran a search whose results he knew, and smiled when the numbers matched his recollection.

One hundred and thirty-nine _sentient_ books, each with a will and motivation of its own. He ran a second search to exclude a scant handful that he knew could be dangerous without proper supervision, because he and the acolytes weren't going to be able to be in enough places to watch over them. That took him to one hundred and twenty-seven. They needed allies they could trust in a pinch, not ones that could papercut them in the back later.

With another tap on the terminal, he opened a door to a very special collection hall adjacent to Kamar-Taj's main lobbies and led Sophie through. He blinked as the evening light split through the stained glass, making this new room beautifully lively. He could live there the rest of his life, deep down, but he also knew it was made for the sleeping books, not him. "I know most of these books personally," he told her, noting her wide eyes. "Either I shelved them personally, or I went into the field to collect them and bring them to safety."

"So they'll trust you," she said, getting it.

"Correct. You're going to help guide them to staging." He frowned thoughtfully, looking along the shelves and unchaining them all with a tap. "I need to ask one to take charge. A field general, if you will, for our sakes."

"There's a book like that?"

"There is. She has been quite weary for many centuries, but she knows the value of protecting an endangered people." He found the one he was looking for, and gently pulled it from the shelves. He held it normally enough, yet the look on his face was reverent and his fingers curled around its back cover with love and care. "_Rituals of the Water Snake, Singing Praise to Moon Lady,_" he said in Yue, his native language.

Sophie looked down at her arms, saw the skin prickling gooseflesh. She was young, but she was training in bioetheric natura magics and understood immediately. "Oh, my gods. She's a _dragon_." She looked at Wong, focused on his work. "You're waking up a dragon to help save us."

Wong whispered to the book, explaining what he needed. And with a glittering roar like water across ancient pebbled stones, the book _came alive_.


	12. Chapter 12

12\. Call Down the Moon

. . .

She was a child of the ancient Long, and the river she was born from was small now and had a name only the locals knew, but she remembered it, O, she remembered it and whispered it to herself between the pages of the book she sleeps in now and feels it drip along her scales, and she remembers the way she sang down the Moon Lady long ago, and their joy spilled the banks of her water to protect her people.

She has been dreaming for an age, and in those dreams, recently, are a kind young man who speaks her language and all the languages of her sacred family, and he speaks them with love and reverence. He is of the dragon himself, she has since decided, as is her noble right to honor him, and when he asks her for her protection, she sings it out happily, glad to be free and alive and remembered - and she can smell in all the water that makes up the earth, the things of Chaos that are trying to hurt the lives she must now consider under her care.

She is in this hour the river of the world, crowned so by need, and there are such songs pouring forth from all the other books around her, and they remember how to fight, and she, _she_ remembers how to lead them forward.

Under the water now rushing upwards, her claws and fangs are eternally sharp, and her cry as she breaks through the planes is pure and free.

. . .

Vittorio Montesi had 'generals' of his own, and one of them whispered a Word so that he could see what they saw, high atop a bank's expensive building further away from Bleecker Street than they would have guessed, the glare of its sign helping to mask mundane eyes. Their own eyes were sharpened by both shadows and the unknown, and saw finely despite all the light pollution around them.

What they saw was an impossibility, flitting between layers of reality so to not upset the blind ones that lived all around them. A living, gleaming river poured upwards from earth long buried under the concrete, rising and curling around the entire Sanctum. As it flowed, it hardened - but what was left behind under the sloughing water was not ice. One of the acolytes screamed in fright as the water rippled along itself like countless raging waterfalls, leaving pearlescent and silver scales and golden claws, and, as it rose, rose, and roared forth, there was an enormous, catlike jade eye staring directly at them. Its face formed last around that eye, broad and strange and beautiful, and steam poured from its nostrils like sacred fire. It - a _dragon_, how could it be? Not one of the brutes from elsewhere in the planes, or the semi-forgotten mystics of the fire realms, but one of this world's ancient, sacred beasts - it curled and clenched around the Sanctum like an egg or like a world, fitting itself around it in perfect protection. Claws glinted as the beast hardened its shape, razor-sharp enough to cut nightmare.

The acolytes began to frenzy, panicked, knowing they would never cut through that hide. This door to their goal was closing.

And then the light rose and became fire as further impossibilities rustled through the air, carried by whispers of defiance, and countless ghosts began to converge upon Chthon's 'children.'

_In the beginning was the word, and the word was hope_, whispered one strange and shapeless thing, tearing through the shields of one of the eldest Chthonics and burning him apart. _And I alone must tell thee_, said another, and _Listen now to when the old days sang lullabies to the day next to be born_, cried forth, and beyond that first salvo was the rising shape of some _thing_ bound within a terrible, holy grimoire, sworn now to that Sanctum's eternal protection. It sang its war ballad in a sacred language, and the intent was clear. Its target would die, purified. Over and over. It cut its way through with a spear of poetry, and grew stronger until its face could be seen, flickering black-edged pages folded into the shape of some beautiful being, so perfect it was eldritch, and their eyes were brown and alive, filled with all the kindnesses of the tribes that had kept its spirit alive. For kindness, it would end this evil. For life, it would destroy.

"Fall back," whispered Vittorio, burying the tremble that last tome gave him. He had no physical strength left, the pain of the ritual he'd committed to continued to wrack his body even as he still called it a blessing. But his inner self was stronger than ever, overtaking those small inner voices that screamed defiantly about his humanity, and ink had flowed from the page to suffuse his body with its terrible power. He _knew_, and he knew what must be done next. The pulse of the Darkhold beat with him, and the physical veil between them seemed thinner than ever. If only he could reach out and grasp its living shell - but he was being denied that glory. Chaos was suffering a setback. He felt Chthon's power weaken and ripple throughout the shadows that cradled the blind world.

For now. They would retake this small loss, and claim blood to pay for their shame. Vittorio had a plan for even this possibility, of course. A little game, to keep the mongrels busy while he recouped his people's strength. "Fall back, and we will find another way to break them. _Survive_, my children."

In the ears of his people, even that whisper held a ferocity that pounded into their skulls. He watched them flinch, and he watched them retreat, losing more than a few as these wretched _things_, these stories given wing, stole them away from him to be cast into that foolish dragon's river. Then he shut his eyes and withdrew into the darkness of his lair, ensuring that no prying eyes had followed him there. No creature of Order, much less one of those annoying sorcerers was permitted entry to this sanctum. It had been built to mock them, but some mockery was best kept secret.

Vittorio Montesi thought to himself in a red tinted haze that he might kill the Long personally, if the opportunity presented itself. He just well might.

. . .

The secret-keeper rocked on its feet, clutching at a stray piece of rubble to keep its balance. A look of shock crossed its ruined features, then pain, and then it fixated on Loki again. All within a single second.

Long enough for Loki to see it. He thought at first he'd caused the reaction, and felt that constant tickle of worry ease before realizing it wasn't his cause. What began as a shouted argument, further denials and attacks of logic meant to dissolve the thing, was turning into some kind of magical war of attrition. He no longer knew how long he'd been in the dead city. The air had darkened around them, a tomb for their unknown war. Perhaps in the end, neither of them would leave it.

His last salvo had gone down like all the others, a wave of pure subzero temperatures hitting the cackling, laughing thing like it didn't feel it. As if nothing could touch it. The keeper simply stood, mocked him, and refused to be banished by any means Loki had at hand. He thought the chill he'd summoned had trickled in, a delayed if small win, but no. It wasn't that. It wasn't him.

He attempted to stretch out his senses, see what else could have interfered with the remote pocket of chaos they were struggling in, but the godsdamned thing regathered and began to prattle at him all over again. Unwillingly, he felt his attention quickly draw back to the keeper grinning anew in its robe. "Oh, do excuse me, pretty prince. My attention wandered." It inclined its head in a mockery of politeness. "Couldn't remember if I set the DVR."

Loki raised his hands, letting ice flicker along his nails. "Gods save the universe from an iteration of myself that watches far too much television." He grit his teeth in a malicious grin. "But then, they do say it rots your brain. Would explain much of what's wrong with you. Not all, of course. I think we've established you're far more broken than that."

"Oh, now you're getting it. Not bad, my prince, not bad." It raised a bony, curling finger. "I'll carve your brain to match mine own yet - one way, or far more preferably, the _other_."

"Interestingly, so far you mostly stand there and run your mouth at me. A few tricks. The shadows drawing close, like an audience." Loki kept his hands up. "Much like last time. You gave chase, but could do little to me directly when I realized you were only a potential fate and that you could be denied. And back then you were closer to real than you are now. I'm astonished this has gone on so damnably long."

"Is that true, pretty prince? Is it?" A horrible, gaping grin. Loki could see a few molars in the shadows behind the eyeteeth, chipped to the root and sickly black. "We've been so patient, waiting for this time to come around again. Why hurry when we can savor this, our last time together?_ I've _been enjoying it."

"Say I have an appointment, with someone that doesn't smell like the bottom of a waterlogged desk. Honestly, that's the most unbelievable thing about you as one of my potential futures. As if I'd ever let myself go like that." Loki gestured at the keeper, the pity flickering back in. Ice traced through the air, his next offensive spell still waiting to be launched. "A television addiction, no longer doing laundry, the poor ink job, the pestering, the hectoring, the _boredom_ of your routine. Think about this. Your loyalty to chaos shapes you into a ruddy mummified jester. If I didn't know what I do about Chthon, I might have expected your look to be the result of a particularly _interesting_ attempt to help my compatriots expose a drug cartel. You look, to be brute, like _shit_. Initial shock aside, how have I ever feared you? I will never become you. You're chained, you stupid thing, and you can't see it."

Something flashed, fire-gold, in the keeper's eyes and it seemed to ready a lunge. Loki had somehow offended it, a genuine reaction. "You cannot comprehend the freedom Chthon will grant me for my task. When I supplant you, all that will bind me is the potentiality of the shadows."

Loki prepared to push it back with the ice strike, but paused. Something about the tone the thing was using, something about-

The keeper hissed and lunged in his direction, cutting off his thought. He had to dance backwards as the thing's claws slashed through the air. He felt the wind press his way, realized that, no, it _was_ real now, it had a shape and it also, it also…

_It's not actually another me I'm facing! I think it's something else!_

His eyes widened a fraction and he almost lost his balance, realizing the thing was trying to distract him again, trying to get him to keep focus on it. Loki had a choice, dodge its current strike or try to chase down what the thing was hiding, and for the sake of his neck and his small but growing collection of scars, he dodged. And kept dodging. And in the press of the scrum, he temporarily forgot his realization.

A moment later, as his back hit a tall, broken cube of marble, the keeper howled as if some victory was approaching it. Loki realized he was growing weary - too long a dance with this damned thing, this mockery of his old choices given some new mask, but still, it was giving him no time to think. Something tickled at his mind, but no time, no time-

And then.

Something.

_Latched_ onto the back of his right calf hard enough to make him bellow a word in pre-Aesiric war-language, the very best language for an Asgardian to curse a motherfucker all the way to Hel and back while shoved up the arse of a war boar, a word designed for someone that not only then fucked that pig, but didn't even have the good sense to have it sent off for bacon after.

A word so highly caustic and offensive that the secret-keeper reared back for a moment, stunned, thinking that some new and apocalyptic spell had been unleashed on it.

And in that brief, hostile silence, Loki's mind cleared in a perfect, perfectly enraged way, and he _saw,_ clear as sunlight, the soul-threads the godsdamned thing was tangling up between them.

_Oh_, he thought, bland and full of shocked realization. The truth had been hidden just out of his sight. More fool him for not realizing sooner. The keeper was some generic but powerful chaos-thing, possibly a scrap torn free from the shell of Chthon itself. After Harkness activated the tear, it had been drawn to the dead city, saw him as a target, and it had wrapped itself in a form ripped directly from his mind. A common enough tactic. He'd faced demons that wielded that weapon before. Then it opportunistically proceeded to try and knit itself into reality by pulling the threads of his soul away. A few more minutes, and that weariness he had been feeling would have led to his death, his body having been wholly hollowed out, and then this thing would have worn him as a sweater and danced its way into the world above, off to merrily kill all of his friends and then, he assumed, help chaos claim the world.

Yes, that made its own sort of sense, he supposed. As far as Chaos went, anyway.

The 'keeper' looked at him, and then, with the surprisingly guilty look of a man caught shoplifting, it glanced at the revealed and glittering soul-threads. Not a few wrapped around its gnarled knuckles, like puppet strings.

Loki marked his new target, the weak place where the soul in the air was his and only his, and its grip was yet weak. Now wholly pissed off, and no small part of it over a ruse that had _almost_ worked, he added a little more oompf to the spell he'd been holding and then threw it right at the nexus of his own soul.

"Well, shit," said a thing that was not actually his own future, and never was, and never would be again, and it vanished. For that last, frustrated second, it sounded more like him than it had at any point prior, and that told Loki just how close he'd been to disaster.

Loki slumped hard to the ground, landing on his rump as his soul dropped back into him with nauseating psychic weight. He gagged, unable to refuse, and then looked around to figure out if a rat had chosen a timely moment to gnaw on a dying man, or what. Gods, but his leg hurt like Hel.

Then he blinked. He blinked rather a lot.

Frej stepped carefully out of the shadow she'd been hiding in just around the block's corner, her ears flickering around and her head hung down. "_Mew_," she said, mournful and quiet, like a cat that had done something far worse than just rip all the sheets off the toilet roll.

"You _bit_ me?"

"…_Mew_." She loafed down, her head laying between her front paws. Her squinting eyes stayed on the old stones.

He stared at her, wonderingly. "You saw I was in trouble and bit me to clear my concentration."

"_Mrr_."

"Damn me," said Loki, starting to gurgle a laugh. "You just saved my arse, kit."

Frej tweaked an ear and risked a glance up at him.

He reached out and grabbed her gently around the middle, hoisting her onto his lap to give her the good shoulder rub she liked. "I think your mother would be very proud of you, Frej. Appropriate violence to resolve the appropriate situation."

She sagged into the shape of his legs, clearly relieved by not only the shoulder rub but his amused tone that lacked all of that feared offense, and she started to purr happily. "Hells, _I'm_ proud of you."

She bunted his stomach with her forehead, and then they looked at the emptiness left behind by the chaos-thing, enjoying a quiet few moments together, where nothing was trying to kill them. For once this week.


	13. Chapter 13

13\. Clean-Up Job

. . .

Loki swatted another patch of white marble dust off his knee, no longer bothering to look at the dwindling place where the rift of chaos and time had been. Having had one hell of an afternoon, personally, not to mention the look on Harkness's face as she tore free of the dying past, he decided, to hells with it, he was going to buckle down and do the gritty, time consuming job of untying this place from every last withered ley line in the area. No more rifts. No more ghosts to haunt the dying city. No places left for chaos to latch onto. Only the slow processions of water and stone would remain when he was done and gone. He was sure Vittorio Montesi would send priests back to reclaim it. He'd left a few 'gifts' behind for them, too.

Even that strange, massive presence he'd sensed when they first arrived was now fading. He thought, though he couldn't be sure, that there was an aura like gratitude in the air as it passed on. As if he had been exorcising not just some demon, but a crowd of tired, trapped ghosts. He stood in the aching silence of the dead city, Frej dozing in a patch of dusty grass nearby, and thought, bemusedly, he was getting rather a knack for such exorcisms. In a pinch, if he stayed on Earth and grew bored enough, perhaps he could set up a side gig.

He stood there, contemplating the silence, when he realized it was no longer entirely silent, and that he was hearing a sound behind him which he'd heard only a few times previous and understood implicitly. With a faint look of polite but private disgust, he waited until Frej was done before speaking. "Have a good nap?"

"Fan_tastic_. It's like like a float tank, slopping around inside your own physical shell, only without being at all restful." Strange's spirit glided up next to him and looked around. "What did I miss?"

"Rather a godsdamn lot." Loki turned to look at the spirit, unable to hide his annoyance with the man, even though nothing at present was particularly his fault. He glanced at Frej to be sure everything was fine with her, and it was. She had already gone back to her nap.

"Where's the rest of our companions?"

"They had to run when a void critter ripped out of a chaos rift and decided to play head games with me. It was quite stressful at first, I must admit."

"Huh," said Strange, neutrally.

"I'm sure they're fine. I expect they're working on some alternative methods of hunting down this Vittorio." Loki shoved his hands into the pockets of his suit pants, looking past the spirit at the ruined temple to be certain that it was still silent and empty. It was. This was the sixth time he checked, and he was strongly considering leaving a brand behind so he could occasionally reassure himself that no more weird shit was going to try to crawl out of the shadows here to mess with him despite his best efforts. Loki took senseless chances as rarely as possible, and he _loathed_ the idea of his arse being caught bare by the same trick twice. "I've been mulling over a few other options before I consider trying to catch up with them."

"Oh?"

Loki jutted his chin at Strange. "So how does one go abouts calling down the gods, oh Sorcerer Supreme of the Mystic Arts, Master of Dark Magic, Chosen of the Vish-"

Strange rolled his eyes. "Stop. We both know whatever title you prefer for me would be far less impressive."

"One night over a bottle of dwarven mead, Coulson happened to suggest Sorcerer Steverino, and I have to say, I _quite_ liked that." Loki spread his hands with a grin.

"You would." Strange sighed. "To your question. The Vishanti, as you can imagine, do not get cell reception, and really, they're not terribly fond of unsolicited calls as a whole."

"How do you make supplication, Stephen? Don't get semantic with _me_, you old, dry goat."

"I don't. I enter into deep meditation, I offer my words and make sure to be clear about my need, and then I sit there for as long as I am able. It's up to them if they answer back. Otherwise, they inform me when they choose to speak - and it's never the most clarified of discussions. If you'll recall, you 'benefited' from my last such conversation. It was not exactly great stuff, though I suppose in the end we did resolve the mess."

Loki studied him, considering that. The Scotland matter again. Shuma-Gorath. "That was years ago."

"Yeah."

"Your patron Gods deign to show up at your side with all the regularity of government officials at infrastructure."

Strange got a look on his face that suggested that he didn't disagree so much as had an issue with the tactlessness of the way the truth was coming out. "Mmm."

"You know." Loki paused. "This is an imperfect way of getting at my point, but at least _Odin_, when he was much younger, showed up when warriors readying for a raid laid out a buffet in his name. These days he at least tries to send a proxy and a nice gift."

"I'm sure," said Strange, neutral again. "Loki, what do you want the attention of the Vishanti for?"

Loki put his hands back into his pockets and gave an offhanded shrug. "Occurs to me they owe _me_ a favor from rather well before that last time they spoke, as it happens, and I've some suggestions on how they could make good on that. Square the debts."

"You don't ask Gods to square their debts." Strange's voice gained a warning note. Loki's irreverence was going to get him into severe trouble, the way he considered such things.

"And yet, Death is quite good at it, while _I_ never leave a bar tab hanging." Loki's eyes went half-lidded. "We're going to get out of this ruddy ossuary, Stephen, and then I think we're going to go do some meditation together."

Rather than argue the point again, Strange let out as heavy and impactful a sigh as his ghostly form could manage.

. . .

"Yeah. Yeah, thanks. No, I don't know that I can get out there personally, but I think we're working on the main issue. Keep me updated. Thanks." Damien swiped away the call with his thumb and shoved the phone back into his jacket pocket. He did it slowly, busy watching an airplane taxi off not all that far away.

Harkness had just enough time to see the album art he was using as a lockscreen. "Hawkwind?" she guessed with a grin.

He raised a finger at her, then frowned. "How the fuck did you pull that out of your back pocket?"

"Might've seen them in concert a few times. Uhh…." She ransacked her memory, then realized what album it _had_ to have been. "Of course. _Warrior on the Edge of Time._"

Hellstrom flushed, caught out again. Then he shook his head. "In any case, it's not important right now."

"The call." Montesi, still looking subdued, leaned against an unused airplane staircase left near the hidden old bay they'd dropped back into Heraklion at. "What broke now?"

"Reality, I'm thinking." Damien flapped his elbows, his hands still in his jacket.

"Not the other Sanctums?" Harkness sounded startled.

"No." He watched another jumbo jet taxi off to parts unknown, squinting against the sunset. "Not yet, anyway. They're going after soft targets, I think. Small ones. A secret library in Jakarta. A tiny rift just dropped what my guy ID'd as some shadow imps in Ulaanbatar. Not dangerous, but they're scaring a lot of the locals. We're coming into night here, so, gods know what's about to hit Europe." He looked back at at the two women, his expression serious. "Then there's going to be more of these small raids in the Americas, if we don't get their attention back on us."

"Fuck," said Harkness. "They're trying to distract Kamar-Taj. And us. Wear everyone down…"

"Until they can figure out a way into the New York Sanctum and through whatever hidden door Strange had set up to the Darkhold," finished Damien for her.

"The body's still safe." Harkness crossed her arms and looked at Montesi, who was now rubbing at her forehead with the butt of her palm. "I don't know where he hid the physical key."

"Is he wise enough to put it in a secure secondary location, maybe entirely off this plane, or do you think it's in New York and just…" Damien shrugged. "Stuck in an aetheric vault inside his favorite sub shop?"

Harkness scrunched her face. "I don't know Strange well enough. I can tell you what _Loki_ would assume. And he'd have a decent chance at being right."

"Sub shop," said both Hellstrom and Montesi. Hellstrom followed it up with a quiet and sincere '_shit_.'

Harkness squinted at the sky, feeling the same creeping worry that had been clear on Hellstrom's face. "What's the chances any of these random attacks could get us a nibble on a trail faster than the guys we're still holding in New York?"

"Not great. And honestly, Harkness, I'm not thinking those guys will give us anything, either." Damien's face seemed to lengthen, his lips narrowing. "It's worth a shot, though. And we'll be there to help your Wong guy and his team."

"But that's not enough to gain any traction." Montesi spoke up, pushing away from the locked staircase. "It'll help us maintain a defense, but we can't wait on a miracle. We need to find out where Vittorio is holed up, and we need to push back." She frowned. "I can't stop thinking that I know somehow, that I have to _know_, that there's a clue somewhere… with me."

She shook her head, continuing. "He wanted me to be _more_ than he was. To be the living link in the chain between him and Chaos. And if my… my mother…" She looked up, turning determined. "Screw it, point is, the answer we need is somewhere in my head. I'll bet anything on it. Aggie, you already put up with too much shit on my account. Go with Hellstrom, check on your guys, make sure they're safe. If someone can portal me back to my office ASAP, no time for a flight plan, I'm going to go through the family archives."

Damien walked over to her as if ready to do what she said, then looked at Harkness. "Do me a favor, since you've been picking on me so much." He waited for the dry smile in response. "You're good in a fight. Go with Montesi. For my sake, because she sucks."

That bought him a glare. "I can throw a punch, Hondo."

"Not when you're up to your ass in your books." Hellstrom didn't bother to look at her. "I'm asking. If they're hitting random targets and trying to blow us off course, they might very well go for Vic when they think they have a shot." He looked down at Montesi, finally seeing the look she was giving him. "And Harkness can arrange a portal for you faster if you come up with something."

She continued to give him the hairy eyeball, then relented. "He makes an okay point. Are you all right with that?"

Harkness nodded, then closed her eyes to enter a quick trance. "Sure am. Hold tight, going to send a request for someone better at long range jumps than me to come by for a pickup. Hopefully Wong has a spare guy left."

. . .

"This is a rock." Strange looked around at the blank expanse that hid the ruins of the dead Atlantean city.

"And it'll do for our purposes." Loki came out of a trance of his own, content that the humans had gotten away from the dead city safely a few hours before. He hoped they were fully well away by now, if not back in New York or somewhere else fairly secured. "It's quiet, unobserved, and, best of all, in a locale that has just been freshly scrubbed of all hostile intent and ability. There's nothing left of Chaos here, Strange, except, nominally, for myself and I'm too obdurate to deal with their like any longer. I am now a happily neutral son of a bitch, an equivocator by trade and an annoyance by hobby. Should be enough for your gods of Order to deal with."

The irreverence was coming out strong again. Strange turned to regard him, his face serious. "Loki-"

"_Don't_. Don't warn me again how powerful and serene your patrons are and how little they care for mocking bastards like me." Loki didn't look at him, but something had hardened in his voice. It was too late, but Strange realized the joking had been some kind of mask. "I'm not calling you out for your loyalties, Strange. I'm weary of Gods who ignore their obligations to those they're bound. That faint bit of faith and guidance. Gods, in my meager opinion, get off easy when they're grand enough. Grant these few scraps of presence to the world and the small ones will feed them all the worship they need to remain strong.

"More of them ought live in a mortal shell once a while, to teach them some perspective. Learn what godsdamn _good_ base faith does the lost, when there's no action, no hand reached to help." Now Loki's voice was turning harsh. "I'm not interested in being a good man at this late stage, Strange, I'd think it hypocritical. But I've gone through a few lessons about what _happens_ when Gods fail at bothering to show up when needed, or when Gods go awry. Let's not overdo what I am - I _am_ a god, if a small one - but even my mistakes caused a great damned deal of harm to more than one world. Harm that I can't take back."

Strange stayed silent, staring at Loki's back.

"The upshot of my little rant here, Strange, is that this powerful, pure aspect of Chaos itself wants its foolish demonic bible back and you full gone, and I am entirely weary of the drama around it all. I've _been_ weary of their nonsense. And in my opinion, since your Gods ought to have the good sense to be equally tired of the damned thing poking around its dominion, well, not to put to fine a point on it…"

Loki turned to give Strange a cold and angry look. "Then your Vishanti can step the fuck up and do something about it themselves. For a change."

Strange blinked.

"Get your transparent self over here and show me how you set your meditation circle. And consider this: since I've got it out of my system, maybe I'll bother to be _slightly_ politic when I drag their threefold arses down to this plane for a talk." Loki grinned, all teeth and merry hostility. "Maybe."


	14. Chapter 14

14\. Press One to Reach Eternity

. . .

For safety's sake, said the acolyte, they were arranging portals outside the boundaries of the New York Sanctum when necessary. Harkness and Montesi were already back in Portland, so Hellstrom stepped through the sparking portal with a lot less worry than he'd felt a half hour ago. Without thinking about much else, he started to head past the acolyte and towards the Sanctum to offer what help he could, and then stopped dead in his tracks.

The formal-looking old Bohemian mansion was still a formal old mansion to most onlookers, but Damien had a demon's eyes hidden under the thin human illusion, and they didn't miss that the mansion was also currently a forty story tall ripple of blue and gold water-steel Chinese Long, and it was thrumming the most intense protection spells under its breath Damien had ever heard in his life.

"It, uh… it normally doesn't look like that, does it?" Damien blinked. "Did I somehow not notice that earlier? Am I finally getting old?"

"We had a few problems," said the acolyte, sounding harried. "Most of the staff is currently asleep. She's buying us a hell of a breather."

"She," said Damien, studying the dragon. She was one of the most beautiful things he'd seen in his life. To his shock, she lifted her head high and turned, regally, to look down at him. A being like her was a sacred deity. He knew, it was his business to know. But he also would have known that just by looking at her. Nothing else in the psychic world looked that powerful or pure. "Holy shit."

"She's a friend of Wong's, apparently."

"Some friend, goddamn, wow," said Damien, absolutely gobsmacked as the Long tipped him a wink and then went back to her work. He got his legs moving again and passed under a veil of scales and claws to see what he could do about some of those pop-up problems happening around the world.

Damien knew he wasn't exactly the world's greatest tactician. But he was durable, a hell of a shot in a pinch, and he never froze in a fight. He made himself forget about the dragon, and let himself be led by the acolyte to Wong, who looked worn down and more than a little wrung out. "Everyone else in the group is doing smarter things," Damien said. "Until they need me for last call, point me at whatever's annoying your people, and I'll go sort it out. I speak twenty-five languages fluently, and can tell a demon to eat shit in a couple dozen more."

Wong gave him a small grin, and sent him off again with a different, slightly less exhausted acolyte.

. . .

The ritual Strange used to open a channel to the solace of the Vishanti was a simple modification of a lotus position, with one hand cupped up in and another splayed down, a motif of the sorcerer themselves in the grey, standing firm between rising order and falling chaos. The posture was comfortable despite its rigidity, meant for the sorcerer to remain in it for hours if necessary. Loki studied his example, gave a quiet snort, and dropped onto his ass with his palms pressed together. He said nothing aloud, but his lips moved through a, well, _modified_ version of the cant Strange recited to open the way between him and the Gods.

Strange winced, hearing not a request in the elegant, secret language of sorcerers, but basically commands to the tune of 'show the fuck up, you poncy bastards.'

A light haze shot through with impossible, vibrant color began to coalesce around them, then thickened into something almost like storm clouds. Darkness ripped through it instead of lightning, greying the world around them, fighting to create the balance needed for communion. Loki wrenched a hand out to control the gateway, ensuring no one could interfere with his work. Including, say, any God that didn't wish to be contacted.

He forced a shape onto the gateway as Strange watched, something he dimly recognized as Asgardian by design. An arch meant for the procession of kings, as flowers and vines of pure arcing light began to curl around it. Strange realized that was part of what Loki had meant by being polite. He was forcing the issue, but also acknowledging the strength and position of the Vishanti. The silent politics of gods.

A noise sundered the air, something vast and deep and powerful, like a scream of rage from some impossible throat. Strange winced, realizing what it was, knowing there wasn't time to warn Loki what was coming. He hoped the man knew and was ready for it.

The gateway twisted and the beautiful arch vanished into dazzling aetheric sparks. A snarling visage replaced it, somehow the size of the sky itself, one eye the sun and the other the moon, and the lapping sea its lower fangs rising up and up and _up_ from the water to threaten Loki. The rest of the jaw formed from those clouds of light, and a nose, nothing at all like the broad snout of a great cat yet describable as only like the memory of such, wrinkled as it took its measure of its offending summoner.

Hoggoth roared again, a warning, an ultimatum, and a demand for apology. Around its vaguely felid features, the Host rippled, those ancient pieces of itself that were formed of light and fire and were its guardians incarnate.

"I'm not impressed by your demands," said Loki. He put a hand on each of his knees and regarded the furious God with a look of stone. "I've a request of my own, and I can argue its primacy. If you can tell me without treading on a lie - and I politely remind you, that, and change, and story, is yet _my_ territory - that you and yours have not avoided such obligations in the past, then I'll relent and untie the gateway. But if you agree to these small terms and treat with me, then what debts you hold with me will be squared, one way or another, and I won't belabor the point I'm making about debts. _Too_ much."

The massive eyes squinted and became cold fire, regarding the tiny god seated before it. It roared again, contemplative this time. Strange _felt_ the God's faint amusement cut through the ties it had to his spirit, though Hoggoth was also yet thrummingly angry at the intrusion.

Nonetheless, the gateway returned. It bore the mark of the Vishanti now, the three-fold crest atop the arch Loki had created, and the massive face pulled back within it. A moment later, a much smaller but still huge and muscular tigerlike creature paced through the arch to sniff down at the top of Loki's head. It opened its mouth to take the full measure of him, marking him in the way cats did, and Strange was entranced by the pearlescent ivory of Hoggoth's fangs.

Hoggoth lifted its great head a moment later, seeing the now awake flerken well behind the pair. Hoggoth huffed a low but pleasant enough sound at Frej, a grunt of acknowledgment from one not-a-cat to another, and paced off to the side of the gateway. The god laid down with brute elegance, a tail that had once torn apart ancient strongholds of evil slapping with gentle but very real irritation against the stones.

Agamotto then arrived, in a manner of speaking. One second the gateway held empty air, and then the next - the _presence_ was all around them, the concept of being seen, the impossible wisp of regard and the knowledge of being. Agamotto whispered something unheard, and within it was a dream of once having been a man, and a nightmare of having been immortal. At Loki's shoe, a small caterpillar appeared, poisonous purple, and smoking, for whatever reason, a stogie vastly larger than its wee form.

"Really?" said Loki to Strange. The question got a smoky exclamation mark puffed into his face. He coughed it away.

"You learn to roll with it." Strange spoke under a breath he didn't actually take and prayed while he did it. Mortal and without form, he was naked before the patrons of Kamar-Taj. If they took offense to his antics, or decided to punish him for Loki's transgressions, well, that was ballgame. Good luck to the next Sorcerer Supreme, and may they learn from his mistakes.

Oshtur stepped through, and for a moment, even Loki looked subdued at what he'd brought forth. This was a figure hooded and wrapped in a robe, not dissimilar to the mockery of the old secret-keeper, but her robe was the darkened blue of the night sky just after sunset, and the hood was lined with runes so ancient no living figure could discern their meaning. Within it was a face whose features were sometimes unclear. Human enough, but the eyes were white and made of secrets, the mouth was dark within dark, her skin was the blackest color of hidden and buried earth. The hood draped low over her forehead, but there was the distinct sense she was smiling at them, and that smile was the concept of beauty as defined by wisdom itself.

When she spoke, her voice rippled like the summer wind over a pond. "Our poor Supreme. You have been granted so few opportunities to learn such adaptation."

Hoggoth growled, unamused.

"We have been asked for truth by one with dominion, Hoggoth, and truth is often unpleasant." An eye gleamed in the darkness, fire-white and impossible. "We _have_ shirked Earth, and we _have_ shirked our debts here, for our universe is vast and what is a penny to the riches of Eternity?"

"At least you're going to be upfront about it," said Loki, who, despite himself, looked a little bit thrown at the impact each weighty word had on his barely mortal form.

Oshtur smiled down at Loki, the way an accepting mother smiles as a baby spits and coos, knowing it is too small to help itself. She reached out and put a single fingertip against his cheek, perhaps for no other reason at first but because she could, and Strange could see Loki's skin underneath turn a brilliant lapis blue. "And you are _not_ upfront, little mask-bearer, and you can never, ever help it."

The blue flush began to spread, purpling dark where there had once been a pale cheek reddening with surprised anger. Strange drifted closer to the now fully jotun-faced Loki, knowing there was nothing he could do to help, yet he found words anyway and they ran off from him in a dignified chide before he could stop himself. "I realize my friend's summons was indelicate, but his point is legitimate and our need is real. Is it the way of my Gods to shame the truth out of those who stand before them, or to guide them?"

Oshtur flashed a look at him, and within that white eye he saw oblivion stretch on and out and turning the world around him into a flash that threatened to swallow him - and then it softened and the sea returned. She stepped away from Loki, who'd gone rigid when Strange talked, and put that finger to her own chin instead. "There ought be shame when shame is deserved."

"'Shame is the tool of Spite, and its chain shall bite its handler as strong as it may its victim.'"

"Writ clear in our book, my Supreme. A small lesson, but a pertinent one. Impertinent to speak it to the one who wrote it, however…" Those white eyes closed. "But, perhaps, earned and deserved." She opened them again, and now they were a dazzling, almost human, earthen golden-brown. She smiled at the ghostly sorcerer with real joy. "Would it enrage you both further to claim this was a test?"

Loki, still blue, started to rise from his seat, and his teeth were set like a shark's. Strange tried to put his hand on the man's shoulder anyway, and stared when he felt the wool and silk blend of the suit jacket under his palm. Behind them, Frej meeped, startled by some change within herself. Real then, that touch. Loki went still, sensing the same change and physical presence.

"A gift, for such small bravery." Oshtur flicked her hand towards the small caterpillar, who took another heroic puff off its Cuban cigar. "Agamotto admires such things. We have no doubt that in due time you would reconnect your soul and body with the power of your own abilities, but in this way, we will _show_ that we understand the message that has brought us here." She looked down at Loki. "Shall I return your illusion and soothe your offense?"

His teeth were still grit tight, and he had to fight to relax his jaw enough to speak. "It is no longer the illusion and what lies underneath that bothers me."

Her eyes lidded, studying him. "A change, then, since last we bothered to look upon you." She stared for a second. "Yes, then. Change." She inclined her head a scant inch. "Then our apology for a deliberately rude act. Freely offered."

"Thank you," he said, stiff but calmly enough. He rose to his feet with less violent intent, and when he tugged his jacket back into elegant position, the shark grin came back with an edge of mischief. "And if I say you've now passed _my_ test, would that enrage the holy Vishanti?"

Something tensed in Oshtur's outline, some ripple of unknown power that pulsed into the world like the snap of ozone after lightning. Her face didn't change expression, however, and it was unknown how she took Loki's words.

It was Hoggoth that began to chuff a series of rough feline grunts - a strange but happy laughter through bared teeth, each great fang the length of a hand. Strange felt his shoulders relax at last. Oshtur often led such rare moots, according to the records, but it was Hoggoth who set the tone when it came to conflict. He could tell now for certain that Hoggoth, for whatever reason, was amused by Loki, and would not consent to an order to eat him.

Oshtur inclined her head as the cattish glee began to fade. "You claim a debt. Will you name it?"

"I will, holy Oshtur," said Loki, and now his voice had taken on its old, noble lilt befitting a prince and god of the Nine Realms. "But let me lay the pattern of my summons down plain for you to read first. I hold your debt, but I will not ask for it to be paid in my name. Instead, let its resolution wait for a little while as collateral between us, as I make a _suggestion_ about a certain thorn in all our sides."

Oshtur studied him, glittering and interested now. Smoke rose from Agamotto's stogie, the smell of it becoming the rich mix of autumn bonfires and torches set at a mystery play. Strange looked between the two of them, not knowing at all where this was going. Loki was giving away a rare prize, and he had no idea for what. Or for whom.

"Name your collateral, then, small but intriguing God, and then tell us what you've in mind regarding our prodigal kin." Those strange and limitless eyes hooded. "Chthon, and its foolish book of lost souls. Yes. We suppose it is well past time to see its last page writ and the matter closed for good and for all. Speak on, then. You have our ears, and our agreement."

Loki bowed in the low and elegant way one did to a higher ranked royal, and then he began to talk.


	15. Chapter 15

15\. Make Me One With Everything

. . .

These shelves didn't hold grimoires and carefully wrapped sacred texts waiting for the next leg of their journey. It held photo albums and loose notes, many of whom were scratched onto papers torn from spiral notebooks. The detritus of a normal human life - even if some of the oldest doodles in the margins were a bit more hellish in their imaginative scope than some. Victoria rifled through all of these by way of searching her own memory, shaking her head on occasion and muttering things to herself that Aggie couldn't catch.

Aggie spent her time rubbing at her arms and keeping her 'eye' on the general surroundings. She'd dressed for the warmth of Crete, but some of the curio shop's back rooms were temperature controlled, and certainly not for the sake of that spaghetti-strap top she still wore. She half-turned at a different-sounding mutter from Montesi, wondering if she'd found something, and instead caught the woman pointing at some back boxes. "What?"

"I said I've got a couple shawls stuffed back there. Relics from my experimental college days."

Aggie squinted at the grin Victoria had. "Yeah?"

"I was a salacious, absolutely _rogue_ crocheter. Made a bunch of scarves and shit, then half a blanket, then kind of forgot to ever touch a hook again." Montesi went back to the album she was flipping through. "But the shawls I made are still top notch. They're not pretty, but I had more money than sense, so they're wool blends. They're terrific when I'm back here for hours. Which is, let's face it, most of my more normal days."

Aggie wandered back towards the boxes to look for one of the shawls, rustling behind the cardboard until she found them. She picked out the ugliest but extra squidgy-looking one. It was made up of a bunch of half-assed barf-and-orange color granny squares lined and then stitched together with a sparkly black, but true to advertisement, it felt glorious in her hand. She tossed it over her shoulders and felt warmer immediately. She turned around to watch the search continue. "What, this isn't normal for you?"

"Damn, I wish I had a Halloween City witch hat lying around, that is _aesthetic_, Aggie." Montesi started to laugh. "And not quite." She tossed an album onto the desk with a fluttering handful of other scratchy notes. "On my normal days, I don't have to think about my family every minute."

Aggie couldn't think of anything to say to that, so she tugged awkwardly at the corners of the shawl instead and then looked at the covers of the albums. They were unremarkable, as family albums went. Soft pastel blues and greens, some of them lined in that Mead-style school plastic, but aged a faint yellow to show that they'd been sitting untouched on the shelves for several, several years. She went over to one and flipped through it. Different scholastic facades. Here, Italy. There, France. Austria. A summer in Turkey, riding atop sturdy-looking horses. She snorted to herself, thinking about not much in particular. "You got to see a lot of the world, if maybe not under the best intentions."

"Yeah, Vittorio went basically on a whirlwind tour after leaving the church. You could pass it off as a freed hermit getting high on his new life, but most of those places I went to have some sort of connection to Chthon."

"Turkey?" Aggie looked up from the album.

"A Thracian barbarian tribe during the Peloponnesian War dedicated themselves to Chthon. They were impalers, according to Herodotus. Admittedly not the best primary source, but… They killed every living thing they encountered in a village, and displayed the bodies on their weapons after the rampage. _That_ part comes from cult contemporary sources."

"Shit," said Aggie, and put the album back down. She tapped her finger on it. "Was there any place you went back to more than once?"

"Several." Montesi sighed and dumped another album onto the table. "That's the problem I'm having here. I can't think of specifics. There were places I saw when I was young, then again when I was older. Varnae, he had so much money and power stashed around the world, he went anywhere he wanted. So there were a lot of years we were basically camp followers to him. Not that I knew then, I was usually stuffed up in a dorm and brought out in the summer for adventures." She stopped herself, thinking. "There were a couple of places we went to a lot, though. Parts of Italy, I think they were stealing more stuff out of the Vatican vaults, so I just… think of my childhood as Italian. But we were in France a lot, too. Varnae owned a castle there, it seemed like it was his favorite place."

Aggie caught her eye. "Was it Vittorio's?"

"No, it just seemed too sacred for him to be comfortable there long. Like he didn't belong. Or yet, anyway." Montesi put her hand on one of the albums, leaning against it and thinking. "Down in the Occitanie region."

Aggie started with a jerk. "Wait." She pushed her butt off the desk she'd been leaning on and began to pace, fast. "Wait, wait, wait, wait. What did he say that night? Oh, hell, what did he say?"

"Aggie?"

Aggie put up a single finger, still pacing, still searching her thoughts. Her voice took on a history lecturer's rapid cant. "Loki doesn't talk much about anything that happens to him. But. Last Halloween, we had a party at the Sanctum. We were telling each other horror stories, you know, as you do, and it turned out later that night that the party was _also_ a lifeline spell for Strange and Loki." She caught the look Victoria gave her. "Not important. After their part was done and they were back in the Sanctum, Loki brought out some drinks from Asgard, and we actually got him to talk for a bit. Not much. Snippets of stories. We were all pretty tired and loopy by this point, and Strange started to needle him. Common thing between them. They started talking about the Darkhold, though, without directly talking about it, and Strange likes to give him shit about the time he basically destroyed the place over it. The Sanctum's facade. It was a long time ago, before I joined SHIELD."

Victoria blinked at that and sat down.

"It drew a rant out of Loki that night. Something about a keeper of the Darkhold - I _think_ that's what we saw in the dead city, by the way, this almost-version of him. I don't know much more - and the things it was supposed to do in Chthon's name. I think he'd been quietly doing his homework on the book, despite the fact that Strange keeps assuring everyone it's on permanent lock-up. Probably has ever since the first time Loki crossed it. And…" Aggie took a breath and stopped her pacing. "Loki said something about France. In the Occitanie. But he said it used to be the Languedoc, like that specifically mattered. He was pissed off about it and stopped talking. Barely said a word the rest of the night, only opened his mouth to keep drinking." She shook her head. "He'll either go for hours or never say a word, biggest asshole I know. I hope he's all right."

"Rennes-les-Chateau. He was talking about Rennes-les-Chateau." Montesi began to rub the side of her face hard, sounding oddly certain. "I thought that was one of the bullshit myths the cult made up. I didn't think…" She shook her head. "Varnae's home is - was - is - _whatever_. It's in Couiza, it's a castle that used to belong to the Duke of Joyeuse. That's a stone's throw from Rennes. There's a lot of guff thrown around that it's where they hid the descendants of Jesus's bloodline, or some lost and holy treasure. I don't know, it's ridiculous bullshit. But according to the cult, it's actually where they bound the Darkhold a long, long time ago. A different, much bleaker birth." She laughed, joyless. "It's beautiful out there. I thought it was some sort of in-joke. It didn't make any sense. There's nothing apocalyptic out there, just an old church with a kind of creepy holy water font, and too much goofball tourism." She dropped her hand from her face and looked up at Aggie, her face lined with new exhaustion.

Aggie looked back. "So your father is there. Holed up either in Varnae's old castle or using this tourist trap Darkhold church. Feeling like it's time and he's finally earning his place in the eyes of Chthon."

"Yeah." Another small bark of a laugh, heavy and hollow and knowing in Victoria's chest. "Yeah. You've _got_ to be right. It's that clear. I was overthinking it, but that's it. Everyone returns to the place they were born." She inhaled, then stopped, her eyes going into a long, strange stare. The look of someone that had just sensed something not physical hitting a magical ward. "What was that?"

Aggie felt it a second later. A warning thrum that felt like it rippled through all the wood in the building and up into her belly through her feet. "Those are your protections, aren't they?" It was rhetorical. She had already brought up her hands and slapped them together to create her own blue-lit version of Kamar-Taj's protective shields, a pushback spell waiting behind her teeth. "Anything you've got about Varnae's house, get it under your eye. We might have to run."

"I hear you, but I'm not leaving everything else behind for these bastards." Montesi was on her feet, her hands running across the walls as if a console were hidden just underneath the wood. In a magical sense, perhaps there was. "Can you hold off an attack? I'll get backup here."

"Not for long." Aggie grit her teeth as a glass window smashed into the building from several rooms away, a surge of malignant energy building up just beyond it. "But I'll make sure it's for long enough." _No matter what_.

. . .

Damien Hellstrom did his best to keep some fun in his life. It would have been all too easy for him to invent emo six hundred years too early, considering what he had to deal with, and there were certain time periods that pulled him towards being viewed as more stoic and grumpy than usual. Puritan North America, God, but that had been the _worst_. He'd had to leave his first and favorite lute in a vault in Germany, the one he'd had since he was thirty, _actually_ thirty, because those unhappy bastards thought too much merriment was the sign of the Devil, and the son of said Devil (sort of, anyway) vastly preferred getting paid if he was going to put up with a particular generation's bullshit for more than a minute.

He'd risked bringing a gittern he didn't like as much, and had to abandon it after being chased out of Massachusetts by some piss-headed priest who thought Damien was luring the maidens to Satan via his music. He _had_ been getting laid, incidentally, but then, so had the Pope back in the 1400's, that old bag of shit, and Damien was still irritated that God hadn't bothered to strike Alex Borgia il Bill-Avoider down over it.

So when he got to Pennsylvania and met Fenna and the sorceresses of Chthon, he was already in a fairly consistent bad mood that wouldn't fade until about fifty years later.

The fact that America never fully got over its puritan streak was a constant thorn in his side, but hey. The world finally opened up again at the end of the twentieth century and he was there to see it. So now he was in Uzbekistan, up to his ass in ash imps with mouths like lampreys and who made the same sort of hissing you might expect from a particularly het up gang of swans, and there was a band of even more pissed off Tartars helping him swat the suckers back into the void. They had a visiting Mongol with them, a throat singer who chanted merrily while he fought. Like he had finally been reborn into his proper time and place.

The good times, decided Damian as he reloaded his crossbow with another silver-etched bolt, were rocking and rolling once more. He did his job with a joy and verve he hadn't felt since the 70's, and it was an oddly unsurprised shout from one of the Tartars that let him know that another one of Kamar-Taj's portal had opened up nearby. He assumed he'd be sent off to somewhere else. In the last three hours, he'd been in New Zealand, Thailand, and Poland before arriving here. He wondered if Spain was next, or maybe Greenland. Chasing the moon, and all the critters lurking in its shadow that were waiting to strike.

He landed a body shot on one of the remaining imps and casually spun around to see Wong himself step through, a tense look on his face. "Montesi?"

"The attack they expected. Your friend sends along that they've a destination in mind, but she had no time to explain." Wong gestured at the portal. "Sounds like we're finally getting ready for a push back on the cult. I'll be coming along. The Sanctum is currently stable enough for the others to maintain."

One of the men slapped him on the back and gave him a nod, gesturing to the half a dozen remaining imps with an expression that suggested the imps would be better off packing up and leaving. Damien nodded back with a grin and slung his bow over his shoulder before focusing on Wong. "Lead on."

. . .

"I don't understand what you're up to. Trap that Vittorio, yes, that part is clear but-"

"But, Strange, until your cue to act, you're _silent_. Everything relies on you being out of sight and out of mind. Just the way I prefer you, as an aside. Our enemy assumes you're still out of play and a viable target for their goal. We need to use that to our advantage while we can."

The sorcerer shook his head, hurriedly following Loki up a subway staircase after taking a portal of their own back to one of the lesser used janitor's closets, a frequently used and safe location to jump through when one had to arrive a decent distance away from the Sanctum. Portals were endlessly useful, but long range ones took a certain amount of will and energy to use, and so it was common to use mundane transport right up to the point where the philosophy of damn the engines and full speed ahead applied. Loki was now fully prepared to burn magical energy until the situation resolved. His aura seemed to gleam into the physical plane, a shimmer of green and gold along his skin. "And I told you, I understand. It's the bargain I'm curious about-"

"That's unimportant right now, Strange." It was curt. "Listen to me. By now the others know where the Chthonic hideout is and are well on their way towards it. Agamotto's obnoxious riddle implied that much."

Strange rolled his eyes, unable to help himself. _Holy font to holy hell, ruined sanctum's final knell. On their way, two by two, unholy childe and holy crew_. Agamotto lived and died by riddles couched in shitty poetry. At least he maintained a consistent style.

"Our Sanctum is held for now. But what we've got to do is get that idiot out of play, if not end him outright. I'll settle for a trap, but I'll admit that's not my only hope." Loki stopped mid-ascent and turned to look down at Strange. "He's stayed off the field thus far for a very specific reason, and it's a common enough one. He doesn't want us to know his capabilities. By now he's fully committed to his loyalties. He'll be Chthon's thing wholly, and he'll be dangerous if he's unleashed."

"Do you know that?"

Loki gave him the dead-eyed stare of the spiritually and mentally exhausted. "As we've previously discussed. This is far from my first dance with Chaos." He glanced upward, where the evening light was fading into night, and shook his head. "The facts of his power are unimportant. That he's _powerful_ is a given. He's withdrawn to his own territory to arrange a final attack, one he'll spearhead, naturally. So what we've got to do is knock him off balance at the moment that will do the most damage to him and his cause."

"And what moment is that?"

"The moment he - and by natural extension, Chthon - thinks he's won." Loki stepped onto the sidewalk and whisked a glance across his surroundings, making sure they were safe and unobserved. "Risky, certainly, but still our best chance. First, though, I need to prepare a certain scrap of bait. Your door to the Darkhold's vault. Where is it? Tell me it's not underneath the Sanctum, that you were smarter than that."

"It's not there." Strange turned reluctant. "But it's close."

Loki rolled his eyes. "Wouldn't want to have to stray afar from the route of your morning jog, I'm sure. Where?"

Strange grit his teeth.

"_Where_?"

Doctor Stephen Strange crossed his arms against his chest, drew himself up to his full height - which was pointedly shorter than Loki, if not by that much - and took a deep, dramatic inhale. "An ordinary looking little place nearby Wong and I know well. Never draws attention to itself. It was perfect."

"Strange."

He sagged, just a little. "It's behind a dimensional door I created behind the sandwich shop up a couple blocks from the Sanctum. I think you had a bagel there the other morning."

Loki stared at Strange. Then he kept staring, only now with hot, lively verve. Then he finally spoke, and when he did, every consonant seemed laced with spitting acid. "You are the _biggest_ idiot I know. No wonder your Gods love you. Fools and little children, blessed most by bemused deities all throughout the universe." He jerked his head towards where he thought the sandwich joint in question was. "Get invisible, idiot. Ask Frej for help if you need it. Stay behind and move slow. And don't think I've forgotten about my promise to throttle you later."

Strange muttered something incredibly hostile under his breath, but a second later, he vanished.


	16. Chapter 16

16\. Unholy Blood, Unholy Grail

. . .

Aggie held on, the assault on the curio shop seeming like it would never end, as if the presence of Wong and Hellstrom had only urged on the remaining cultists entrenched within one of the storerooms. Her shield was still up and whole despite having had to push back a direct assault from a man wearing the desiccated but dangerously empowered claw of an imp around his neck, but the exhaustion was digging bone deep. Behind her, Montesi was still trying to engage what she called the purge protocol - some intricate artifact-style spell meant to expel invaders just like these from her shop.

The fight had thus far been going on for only ten minutes or so, but it felt like hours. Aggie sagged, hoping for a breather while Wong kept any further attackers from getting inside. There were still ten of them within, playing a dangerous game of hide and seek with Damian, and even one getting past him was going to be game over for her and Victoria. "Vic."

"Almost." She sounded equally ragged. "Almost, gods damn it, they're ahead of me. One of them is wedged in, I can't… I can't get around him, somehow."

"Can't close the circuit." Aggie half-turned to look at her.

"Exactly. Shit." She followed it up with a yell at the top of her lungs. "Damien! Austrian collections!"

"Hope he heard you."

"Yeah, me- _look out_!"

Aggie spun back to see the cultist lunging through the doorway at her. She pushed back at him with everything she had left, felt something painful twinge to the edge of breaking inside her, and stumbled half to the floor even as the man didn't stagger from the limp attack. He grinned down at her instead, an awful, indescribable light flickering along his own hands.

She panted, scrabbling around inside of herself for anything left. Any miracle. That twinge was the last warning a magic user had to tell them that they were at the edge of the kind of exhaustion that may well end in death. She'd been there once before, during a practice set where she'd gotten it in her head to push herself as hard as possible, no matter what Loki magics threw at her. Just to see what her limits really were. He had been _furious_ when she passed out under an assault he'd had to pull at the last second, that twinge becoming an inferno cutting through her entire nervous system. That he had very nearly destroyed her made him boil over. Endangering herself for some foolish cause, _that_ had earned her the silent treatment for weeks. She was off active roster for a month, and her body ached for all of it as if she had fifteen different varieties of the flu, and maybe leukemia, wracking her bones from the inside out.

No. There was nothing left inside. If she warded off one more attack from this new arrival, she would die. But if she didn't, the cost would be disastrous. Chthon would be one step closer to winning back its book.

It was never a question, not really.

Aggie raised her hands, letting instinct take over and ignoring the pain already beginning to sear itself along every muscle and nerve, letting the magic come to life all along her skin. If this was going to be a final strike, hell, she was going to make it a good one.

The cultist smiled, as if sensing her impending death, and pushed his hands forward, sickly yellow energy building into something that would rip its way through that final shield to torture her down into death - and Montesi, too.

Agatha Harkness screamed raw defiance back, ready to yank out her own soul just to tell Chthon to go fuck itself face to face, and instead of dying, she found that final miracle deep inside, waiting to be called upon.

From her hands poured some impossible light, a chromatic blindness of harmonic power, and her mind ached at the sensation. It poured, unceasing, and beyond it was some sound she'd heard once in a dream, and the scent of strange smoke and a gentle feline laugh, and suddenly, the grinding of some heavy gear, some artifact magic sparking as every one of Montesi's curios finally sprang to life and began to push their attackers out.

_The light!_ Aggie sagged to her knees as her attacker disappeared, dissipated, no longer existing in this world or any other, but the light still poured from her, pooled around her like a lagoon of raw power. The music in her head continued, and then, just as abruptly as it came, vanished. She waited, her hands shaking, waiting for her breath to stop, for the pain to numb with her mind as she died. And she kept waiting, staring at her hands, feeling nothing but the vague desire for a snack. Around her, the curio shop continued to come to life, hardening itself as the sound of the fray began to die out. Somewhere Damien yelled, victorious.

"Aggie?" A step behind her, crystalline bright, as if all her senses were too awake. Montesi's voice sounded frightened. She'd likely sensed how close to the edge Harkness had been. "Are you all right?"

Aggie flexed her hands, seeing every line and speckle of color within her skin, blinking as the sensation of far too much awareness began to ease off. Something pounded in the back of her mind, like music. "Am I dead?"

"…No, but you just finished glowing. What _was_ that?"

Aggie shook her head, sensing every muscle in her neck, and otherwise feeling, oddly, just fine. "I have absolutely no idea." She twisted around on her heels, feeling a vague sense of guidance and determination. She looked up at Montesi, seeing her prickling, curious aura, seeing _everything_, and then it eased off. "But we don't have time to puzzle at it right now. Let's get the guys and head out to France. Right now. Before they try to hit us again."

Victoria studied her, her face still worried. "Are you sure you have the energy for that?"

Aggie flexed her hands, still feeling that drive and renewed, unusual vigor. Somewhere, a voice sang. "Absolutely."

. . .

Count Varnae had the tunnel built in the 19th century, a ragged but safe enough throughway from the rooms at the little castle that he'd kept his own until his death - the rest of it was now a moderately well liked hotel - straight to a similarly well hidden exit within the church of the Magdalene. Rennes-les-Chateau kept expanded tourist hours in the busy tourist season, of which they nominally were in. But it had been no issue for Vittorio Montesi, well known and liked in the village, to urge the visitor offices to close business for the week. The frenzy around the old practical joke had faded in the last few years, for which Montesi today was grateful.

He'd never read the Dan Brown books, naturally. He had no taste for modern popular fiction, preferring the classic Italians. He thought about Dante Alighieri a lot, especially lately. The Devil will have his bargain - and his due.

And why not, thought Vittorio, with hostility and betrayal alive inside him, warring with the chaos that always overtook everything else. Why not? It was the Devil's world, now. Let something more pure claim and remake it. What Vittorio chose to serve was the cleansing fire, if not of the Christian God he once claimed to love, but of something more primal and true - and, whispered the page of the Darkhold inset within his own flesh, _real_. In its name, he scurried from his lair back to the church, feeling his still-mortal body begin to rebel against the exertions he put it through. No matter. The Darkhold was in his blood now, its ink gave him everything he needed.

"Sir," whispered one of the other men as he arrived, unable to speak above a whisper at the impossible presence of Chthon smothering them all through the small, silent church. "The font."

"It's drained?" At the nod, Montesi grimaced. "Refill it as we planned, then. From the bowl. We'll need the blood ready for the binding work. I want nothing to wait, nothing else left to chance. Chaos may serve us when we call, but it's not tame, nor our pet."

"So wrote the great vampire."

"So he did." Vittorio snapped his hand at the other man. "Have one of the others guide me to the main chamber. Time is growing short. We'll face opposition soon, I'm almost sure of it."

"Certain, lord?"

"It's what any of us would do, in Chthon's name. It's what Victoria no doubt plans to do." Vittorio took a heavy breath, felt it thicken in his chest. Were he still mortal, he would be courting a heart attack today. But he no longer was, and what price was one enlarged, weakened heart against the promise of all of eternity? "I will grant her, with our mercy, one final chance to put all her heresies aside and come home. The last such chance, by the grace of her makers." He turned to look at the younger man, who eyed his pale, slick skin with a flicker of doubt. That one would not survive ascension. He might do as a sacrifice. For now, he would show mercy. Vittorio inclined his head and explained. "The Sacred City was attacked earlier. It responded in kind. If she survived what it had to show her, then she might be, at last, receptive to her heritage."

The young man bowed his head. "All hail blessed R'llyeh, where Great Lord Varnae brought Chthon to Atlantis."

"Hail R'llyeh, where our God took Its first step into a new world."

"_Ia_," said the young man, and he kept his head bowed as Vittorio swept by him to go deeper into the church's territory, and he was unable to stop a shiver from passing along his back. "_Ia_."

. . .

_Ten seconds later:_

"_Ia_-t my whole ass, you pack of freaks." Damien pulled the young cultist back into the shadows, his hand clasped firmly over the man's mouth. His other arm was strapped across the thin neck. The potential outcome for his prisoner was clear - screw around, and them's the breaks. In the spine.

"That's terrible," hissed Aggie into his ear from where she was magically _dim_ beside him. She turned her attention to the top of the cultist's head, the man otherwise now limp in Damien's grasp. "Where are you keeping the _supplies_ for the font?"

His eyes, young and blue, widened at the hostility in her voice. He shook his head.

"Yes, you do. We heard the whole thing." Victoria Montesi slipped out of the shadows and fixed the cultist with a cold, hard stare, going for an interrogator's effect. "Do you know what's going to happen when they decide they need more?"

The cultist struggled, slapping a hand out and trying to grip Damien's arm away from his neck. But he found no purchase on the enchanted leather, and Damien wasted a second to tip Aggie a wry wink. She rolled her eyes and glanced at Victoria.

She kept her stare locked onto the young cultist, not budging when Wong came up alongside her. He'd pulled the collar of his red and blue robe up, turning it into a deep cowl that hid his face. His hands were glowing, and he said nothing otherwise, letting her talk. "Have you ever faced the trials of Order? Do you know the searing pain of Light?"

The cultist struggled again, his eyes wider yet.

She lifted her chin. "They are nothing… compared to what Vittorio will do to you when he decides his master needs more to feed on. I can't torture you. Whatever you've been told about the other side is a lie. You saw the look my father gave you when he left. You're disposable. Like all the rest. Like _I_ was." Victoria stepped closer, her face softening. "You recognize me, Stephano. I babysat you. You took me around the fields on your father's pony one day." She reached out and put her palm on his face, gentle. "If he's willing to throw me away for his mad god, do you think your sacrifice will matter at all?"

The young cultist shuddered and went limp in Damien's arms. Sensing the change, Damien took his hand off Stephano's mouth, listening to the thick, reluctant Sicilian accent pushing through clear English. "The blood is in a hidden space behind the altar. It's not hard to find, the bas relief pushes away." He looked around, uncertain, as Damien fully let him go. "The rest… uh… the sacrifices are locked in the Tour. I don't know who they are."

"Yes, you do," said Victoria.

Stephano's gaze darted around the stone floor. "They sent four of the other members back home yesterday. I was told they were not ready for the master's purpose."

"Stephano…" Home in a sense. But not a physical one.

The young man licked his lips, looking unsteady again. "He'll kill all of us anyway."

"Enough." Wong flicked the cowl back, giving Stephano an unimpressed glance when he recoiled, now recognizing one of the highest keepers of Kamar-Taj. "He's given us what we need, and he's too frightened to do more." He turned to Stephano. "Given an honest choice, do you want to live?"

Stephano's mouth worked, confused by the simple question.

"Hmm. Most do." Wong gestured towards the door leading to the village. "Go. Remove your robes and take anyone else who's willing to desert this cause to the inn there. You'll be taken to safety after we stop the loyalists."

"You'll kill us!" The fear in Stephano's voice was a living, writhing thing.

Wong shook his head. "That is not my way, nor the way of Kamar-Taj. On my _own_ word, you will be kept safe, and when Chthon is pushed away once more, you will be given an opportunity to reshape your life as you choose. No indoctrination. No force. Only a choice all your own. It will become dangerous here very shortly." He jutted his chin at Stephano. "Go."

Stephano got.

. . .

Loki looked around, ensuring that neither Strange nor Frej had yet followed him inside the pocket dimension. There could be no distractions while he set about this part, and he didn't want to leave additional dangers around for the pair to stumble on. Better they both rested for a little while. The glittering, shapeless prison smelled vaguely like cold cuts, and he wasn't sure if that was due to the overflowing dumpster that was near where Strange had left the magical doorway, or if he was imagining it out of some kind of personal spite. Could be either, honestly.

The prisoners went untroubled by this, of course. Suspended within the crystalline, impossibly strong psychic walls were the remaining sisters of the Darkhold. Once there had been seven, haunting and hunting the world for the cause of chaos. Now, after their last stand in Centralia, where the Darkhold had failed to fully come alight, there were only five. They waited dreamless, their consciousness held in a benign cycle of self-awareness. If they ever awoke, it would be because they had finally chosen some other path for themselves. Loki frowned as he looked at each woman in turn. It was not impossible to choose a different life, he was testament to that. But these women had bound themselves deeply to the cursed grimoire. It seemed likelier to him that they would stay in this magic cell for a long, possibly eternal time.

He knew full well he was wasting his own time contemplating them, and why. Behind him lay what he'd come for. The book. A deeply personal nemesis, a thing that had once rooted around the holy sanctum of his mind and forced him, if even only for minutes, to do its bidding. Loki hated the Darkhold like few other things in the universe, the sort of hate that dug under his skin with its bitter chill and had become as familiar as the memory of a cruel winter.

Loki forced himself to turn, at least part of the way, staring suspiciously at the thing over his shoulder, like it had been following him all along. It lay inert, like any other book. The cover, that impossible, hellish leather with its blood red mark cut deep like a wound, was shut. The pages did not flutter as if breathing. The Darkhold still slept, and it did not know he was there.

He realized he was baring his teeth at it. He made himself stop, then proceeded to ready himself for the one thing he never wanted to do in his life.

He focused himself down into the aetheric core of the magical world, anchoring himself as best as he could, as safely as he could, considering what he was about to do. And then he began to tether _himself_ to the Darkhold, a careful, translucent web of magic spinning out of him as he drifted into a kind of liminal state, neither quite here nor there, and not quite invisible. Much like his demonic would-be mirror had tried.

Somewhere nearby a God began to purr, content to wait for his time to strike. The hunt was Hoggoth's very favorite thing, and it liked the mad bravery of Loki's plan very, _very_ much.


	17. Chapter 17

17\. Devil's Advocate

. . .

The church had once been the domain of Father Berenger Sauniere, and that name had become synonymous with conspiracy and embezzlement. In legend, he had been key in hiding the bloodline of Christ. In reality, he sold off his faith for gold and rebuilt the church to his lavish standards. His soul paid back for it, eventually, and the mortal man died penniless.

Varnae used to claim he'd left his mark on the territory long ago, and it was his corruption that had brought Sauniere to temptation and ruin. It might even be true - the holy water font was carved in the shape of a devil, and Varnae, back in the early days of their relationship, liked to show off how it smiled just like him.

Vittorio Montesi had claimed the old Tour Magdala as his lair when staying near the church, one of the failed priest's finest expenditures. It was a fine and private place for inner study, even if he preferred the Joyeuse castle estate for all other purposes. The ghost of the old vampire hung too heavily there for deep thought. Right now, he needed focus.

He sat crosslegged on an old rug trimmed with gold, and his head was hung low, as if protecting the page still embedded in his chest. Behind his closed and flickering eyelids, he studied each link in the chain that would destroy the New York Sanctum, and easily open the way to the Darkhold.

Oh, there were always other ways down that road, if it came to it. The page could not be kept from its book forever. If that damned dragon guardian couldn't be shunted aside, he would consider it. But that final method would _cost_, at a price more than even old Vittorio might choose to pay at first.

Chthon rewarded its servants well, but its wiser servants knew how to manage their investment. Vittorio was old and round and had even been called jolly before they saw how something frightening glinted in his eye, and he was no one's goddamn fool. He grunted as he thought, following a psychic line among all his 'children' and other allies, seeing where the scouts still remained in New York, seeing where others were on their way to the drowned city to see what that obnoxious malingerer god had done to it, the one the sorcerers had called to for help.

He knew Loki, if tangentially. He knew what Chthon knew, and the Darkhold, which had looked about inside the god's head and found him useful enough, and he thought the young looking figure wasn't much more than an annoyance. The god seemed gone from the field now, probably worn from his business in R'ylleh, and that fool, Strange, was still lost to his allies. Good.

In his dark meditation, Vittorio jerked slightly as he turned his attention closer to home. He grit his teeth, wondering what alerted him, what was off… and then he found the knot of chaos that was not of their make. A surprise attack in the church sanctum, some holy force wresting away and - now his mouth curled in a sneer at the heresy - draining and cleansing the blood they had intended for their rites. A setback, and a brutal one. The worst case scenarios Vittorio had planned to avoid just became that much more likely.

Around the attackers lay, unmoving and falling away from his astral contact, several of his Chthonic children. And at the head of the attack was the glittering aura of Victoria.

Vittorio opened his mouth in a feral howl fit to match any creature, coming out of his meditation as the castle bells began to rang to warn the rest of the battle raging in its heart.

. . .

Victoria dropped the chair leg and finished spitting the minor bludgeoning cant at the already prone cultist. A few others had already run for it, taking Wong's bellowed suggestion to desert while they still could with fearful seriousness. Behind Vic, Aggie was doing _something_ to the ruined silver bowl of blood, her hands glowing that strange blue again. She now seemed clearly driven by some other force, and it was Wong that glanced at her occasionally, as if he suspected what it might be. There had been no time to ask, the counterattacks were coming too quickly.

Damien shot another bolt into the balcony rail, pinning the rope and its magical trap firmly into place. "That won't stop the smarter ones, but it'll slow everyone down a bit."

"I'm almost done," whispered Aggie, some unearthly harmony echoing under her voice. It was her, and it was not her. "Hold fast, the page is coming to see its story ended."

Damien shot a glance down at her and the last, fading drops of blood staining the bowl, then at Victoria, and she read the same questions there that she was asking herself. Vic shook her head. She didn't know, but she hoped whatever it was currently inside Harkness was benign enough to treat its host gently. Meanwhile, Vic looked around for another weapon and found Wong pressing a small silver-black athame into her hand. She looked at it, surprised. "I'm not… sanctified…"

"It's one of the Sanctum's living artifacts. Just hold on and trust in hope, and it'll guide your hand. It won't fight for long, but I'm sure it will be long enough." Wong pushed his sleeves up and nodded to Damien. "Silver bolts won't cut the skin of Chthon's own priest, not within his territory. What else do you have?"

Damien rooted around in his hidden quiver, coming up with a short but lethal looking gold-tipped bolt. "Pope kissed this one a few centuries ago and tried to pretend it cleared his debts with me." He looked up with a wink. "He was a shitty pope, okay, but the guy that actually handed it to me used to be a blacksmith. He knew what he was doing with Vatican gold and holy water."

"One shot, then. Wait for the right opening." Wong grimaced, snapping his wrists together to summon the golden seals of Kamar-Taj. "And don't miss."

. . .

Vittorio marched behind a small phalanx of five Chthonic cultists, including the rite-master whose hands were still stained with Vittorio's blood and the page's ink. It rankled him to have to risk this much firepower on a push against their attackers, but if they could not reclaim the sanctuary and the ritual bowl, their whole mission was in danger of entering a mystic imbalance. The blood could be regathered easily, at least. By draining their assaulters.

That would include Victoria. He grimaced, his lips pressing into a thin, almost invisible line. Sacrificing her might well be enough to appease her creator-God for their current mistakes. She had left the flock and then brought the wolves home. Punishments were now due, and she had no chances left to her.

Something twinged inside him at the thought, and he ignored it. It was a small and human emotion, and he had no time for it any longer. There was only Chthon's whisper behind his lips.

A bellow warned him that the first two cultists had found Damien's trap and were cutting it free from the balcony. If it had activated, they all might have been slowed down. He reached his senses ahead and found them - her - waiting. Waiting. Instinct told him to stop as the cultists readied their charge, the trap disarmed, and it was only him that went unaffected as Damien's _real_ trap activated - a counterweight and rope that dumped magical essence on three of the charging men. They stumbled and began to scream as pure light began to eat at the darkness within them, driving them into exhausting hallucinations that would result in them passing out.

Vittorio snarled at the remaining pair at his side, uninterested in the young man with the raising crossbow. "Ignore them, they're useless now. Get those idiots," he shouted, and with a flick of his hand he _pushed_ at Damien with a tendril of raw, unfocused power.

The man was thrust back into the altar, hard, the crossbow dropping from his hand. Vittorio allowed himself a flicker of pleasure at the pain that rippled across his face, losing it just as fast as the Sanctum's guardian flung back a controlled, oddly beautiful ripple of power that stripped away his two remaining guards - including his rite-master - with the simplicity of sea waves. "The Chicago Way," said the man, Wong, with mild but audibly clear distaste, his hand reaching down to support Damien. "Stand down, Montesi. You will not win today."

Something burned into life inside Vittorio. He would not be stopped that easily. Chthon's ascendancy would not be stopped so easily, not by some churchlike militant chiding him as if he were a little _boy_. He raised his hands and with a soundless howl he flung Chthon's raw power at Wong - and missed?

No. It dissipated harmlessly, leaving his target just as surprised.

A spark of blue patterned into the air, then vanished. And behind it, his daughter. There was a knife in her hand. An athame. Some gift from the Vittorio lifted his head, exposing his neck. "Et tu?"

"Don't," rasped Victoria. She dropped the athame onto the altar, staring at him, her eyes widening into a look of horror. "Don't do this."

Vittorio wondered about that with a growing sense of mild, confused distance, wondering why she seemed so concerned by him. Then he realized those hands of his, still glittering with Chthon's own raw and wild essence, were pawing at his neck, loosing the tunic there and revealing the Words. The power was rising within him, and far beyond his control. It allowed him a moment of transcendent clarity. And horror of the self.

"_Don't_!"

"He cannot help it," said a voice rising from behind the altar. Vittorio hissed in Chthon's sibilant tongue as the woman straightened up. He didn't know who the human was, maybe one of Strange's, maybe one of that idiot would-be God's sycophants. But he recognized the face peering out from behind her eyes well enough. The goddess stared back, those eternal white eyes flickering alive behind the human ones. "Chthon will not be denied its one last chance for power in this era. It will try to win, even if it must tear this small body apart to do so."

Victoria heaved a breath as Vittorio stared at the woman, stared at that Oshtur creature hiding just underneath the human skin, like Chthon did under his own, and he didn't see his daughter pick up Damien's fallen crossbow. "Vittorio," she said, her voice cracking. And then she fired its loaded, golden, holy bolt into the place where the Darkhold's page and a crucial artery overlapped, close to his heart.

Vittorio gasped, reaching for the bolt, his hand suddenly only his again, and his breath turning into a terrible, draining rasp. The pain was the world, and above the world was his daughter's face, staring at him in open horror at what she'd done. For a single second he was a raw creature held aloft on a bubble of blood in his lunges and the world of his regrets. Then his hand wrenched out of his control once more and gripped not the bolt, but the top of the page. He felt his fingernails scrape against his skin, and he couldn't breathe, couldn't breathe, couldn't tell why he was sinking into the world, why he was on his knees.

And then the page whispered to him as it peeled free, sibilant dead words of promise, all the things he'd heard before, and with it went the pain. He didn't know what to feel within that emptiness. All was confusion.

Chthon itself said "**_Come with me_**," and Vittorio continued to sink through the world and into the black, the scraps of his soul tearing apart like paper, as the Darkhold's page seemed to turn into the only real flesh left in the world.

. . .

"He's on his way," said Loki, feeling the Darkhold begin to stir, the leather cover of the book rippling like a lizard waking under an arid sun. He felt it like it was his own flesh, and gods, but he loathed the sensation.

_THE PAGE IS ALREADY FREED_, said Hoggoth inside his mind, each word striking like lightning. _CHTHON CLAIMS THE MAN, SAYS HOLY OSHTUR, BUT SHE ALSO SAYS TO ME THAT THE VESSEL IS WEAK_. _THIS WAS NOT THE PATH THE MAN CHOSE, BUT IT IS THE ONE OUR FALLEN SIBLING WILL NOW FOLLOW_.

"Not to divert from the message, because that is important and useful news, great Hoggoth," said Loki, his eyes now screwed shut as the headache began to settle in. "But, ah, do you have something like a whisper?"

The lightning cracked in a storm of high and happy laughter. "_NO_," said Hoggoth, delighted with itself, and then those mighty fangs gripped Loki's still-tethered spirit with care, tore it the rest of the way from his body, and dove down into Chthon's primordial realm along the metaphysical 'path' Loki had created with the Darkhold through his own soul. The hunt, for mighty Hoggoth, was now on.

. . .

The primordial void is exactly that. It is a space of pure, mind breaking nothingness. Possibilities may randomly spark into being and then attempt to wrest free from the void into reality, but most of the reasons for this occurrence are not designed for mortal minds. There are no landscapes, no compass directions, no sense of up and down or right or wrong. It is not like being blind. It is like being adrift in nothing, and it is terrifyingly easy to become lost there for whatever 'eternity' means to the void.

The _between_ borders it, that alien liminal space between worlds where Loki has walked before, but the void is not part of the multiverse. It is _nothing_, and it is the soul of Chthon. The paradox means that Chthon sleeps between every atom in every universe, and that it cannot be destroyed.

Fortunately for all existence, this is not the goal of the Vishanti, and Loki is smart enough not to hope for it. He'd love it, of course, but he'll take what he can get. The Darkhold's lost page is the first shot of their proxy war here, and Hoggoth is charging on a path through the void that Loki is forcing the book to reveal. Loki is clutched within the God's grasp, a nest of teeth and fangs and the roiling Host, and he knows the game he's about to play is going to be the worst plan he's come up with in his life. So far, anyway. It is the culmination of a dozen different things he's never wanted to do, and because he is bitter about it, he spends part of the journey thinking about how he'd kill Stephen Strange. Which he won't, not today and likely not ever, but he's in a _mood_.

Hoggoth roars to illuminate the void despite its insistence on being nothing, and because Hoggoth is a God, _something_ crackles into being to help guide Loki the rest of the way. As the Darkhold awakens, it is trying to shake him free on instinct. He feels the nausea begin, knows his hand has reached out to touch the unnaturally warm skin of the book, and instead attempts to focus himself on the dreamlike existence of the God all around him. Even here, Hoggoth smells like clean tiger fur on a summer day, the fangs like the bitter copper and heady meat of freshly caught prey, and the Host sing to keep the light all around them growing. There is still _nothing_, of course, out there all around them, but it is warm and Loki can at least see Hoggoth, and it is oddly comforting.

And then they discover something else in the void. It is a piece of the coalescing presence of Chthon itself, and it is using its human tether and the page clutched in his hands to draw itself towards where Loki's physical body is currently transfixed. Hoggoth speeds up to match the growing pressure within the void, and its thundering snarls become a joyful song as the God targets the falling figure of Vittorio Montesi. The man is bleeding from the chest, and the way one hand clutches at it, Loki can already see that in addition to the wound from a golden bolt still pinned in his ribs, he is now having a heart attack.

In the other hand is the page of the Darkhold that's been the cause of all this trouble lately.

The timing of this is going to to be close. Loki is tempted to close his eyes and rely on instinct, but that's a fool's game. Instead, he concentrates all of his will and agility on this stunt he's about to pull.

Hoggoth's goal isn't to broadside Chthon or knock the human free, at least at first. But it shocks the pulsating nothing of Chthon when Hoggoth breezes by Vittorio Montesi.

And Loki reaches out a hand to grip the living, breathing page of the Darkhold _tight_.

Hoggoth howls, pleased, and lets Loki fall from its grasp. Together, trapped by the page, Loki and Vittorio Montesi fall through Loki's soultrap - and find themselves in that very same _between_ where Loki started this goddamn mess so long ago.

. . .

Vittorio jerked around with wide eyes, a hand flung to his chest to find himself apparently whole, and further, draped in a priest's white surplice. Then he realized he was not alone. He whirled and saw the god standing by an empty lectern. Not the one he'd been serving, the one who he now realized had forced him into a world of lies. The one that he, in Chthon's thrall, assumed was an enemy. He didn't know what Loki was now.

No, the lectern wasn't empty. The page lay upon it, fluttering like breathing. "Loki," he breathed, staring at that page. "What have you done to us?"

The god stared back at him. Whatever he felt, it was hidden behind a bone white face and a tiny, unreadable smirk. "What was done to me, once. An irony writ large, the ouroboros of my fate. I've brought us here so we may stand in the _between_, Vittorio Montesi, the crux of time and space, where countless doors surround us." Loki gestured to illustrate the blackened mirrors that surrounded the space they stood in. Montesi had thought it more void, that familiar nothing, but no. Probability lay behind each one, waiting like a snake. "You poor, unbalanced thing. You placed yourself on the path to become the incarnation of what you serve, and you don't know the first thing about the risks of Godhood."

Loki lifted his and said, toneless and yet filled with some unknown power, "_I Am,_" and the page began to flutter again in response. Still the god seemed blank otherwise, but somehow his presence seemed more solid and real.

There was nothing here for Montesi to understand. He shook his head instead. "I don't want your games. I'm dying and I'm exhausted. I haven't been free in decades. I don't fully understand what's going on. What are we _doing_ here?"

That got him a genuine expression, a careful, probing study in Loki's changing eyes. "Your daughter made that suggestion, briefly. I didn't consider it. That you thought what was your free will to choose your path was instead Chaos's joke." His lips pursed. "Not that that alone changes your outcome._ I_ can tell you from experience."

Montesi opened his mouth, wanting to argue, but the years seemed vague. "Varnae," he said, realizing. "He…" His voice trailed off as he rolled up the sleeve of his surplice, looking at the old scar at the crux of his elbow. "Oh, god," he said, and his voice began to shake. "Oh, god, oh god, I was forsaken and I forsook myself, oh god, oh _god_." The ground, made of something not like marble but close enough, drew close to his face to bump his nose as he slumped down to it. "Oh my God, oh Jesus Christ, my _sins_."

A hand reached out and gripped his arm, pulling it out to examine. "What is this?"

"A scar." Montesi's voice cracked. "Just-"

"It's a bite wound. Very old. The lacerations are deepest where the incisors on a human would generally be." Loki let his arm go, and then hunkered down to study the man, face to face. Montesi couldn't bear the close examination and turned away. The god's eyes had gone red. Unearthly, but not unkind. The pity in them, _that_ was the worst. "You were forced. You reached a point of weakness, a place where your faith failed you, and Varnae forced you the rest of the way." A soft noise. "Forced himself on you, as some vampires are wont to do."

Montesi's breath was a choked sob.

"Well. That will make this easier, I suppose." Loki straightened up and turned away from him, regarding the black marble lectern and its lonely page of that cursed book.

"You will finish killing me?" Montesi gurgled something that wasn't a laugh. "When I rejoin my own body, I will die anyway. My heart is failing, and the bolt hit an artery. My daughter always… always had a steady hand." His memories started to drift, dragging him backwards to when she had been a little girl. Those memories were still fairly clear, those moments with her, until the song and the Word began to pull him deeper and deeper away from what he considered his own consciousness. "I am sure I deserve it, but the energy-"

"I won't kill you. But between you and me, Montesi, since we're now apparently speaking on plain and amicable terms, I am about to do the dumbest godsdamn thing I've ever had the misfortune to get backed into doing." The god flicked a glance over his shoulder, and now the skin of his face was blue. Montesi stared back as the lapis skin and darker sapphire lips crinkled in a wry and unhappy grin. "I'm going to tell the Darkhold I'll do what it wants. It needs a Keeper, Montesi. Always, but especially when it is whole. The sisters of Chthon are held fast, and you have been prepared for the role. But _I_ make a better offering, don't I? I thought I was going to have to fight you for the role, but you've no fight left in you at all. And no wonder, I realize now. It was always that bit of Varnae, alive in you, forging a conduit between you and Chaos's master."

"Don't," said Vittorio, weakly. "Don't, you can't imagine what it's like in Chthon's mind, I dreamed of killing gods, of killing dragons, I-"

"Oh, I've been there before, Montesi, but your concern is noted. Appreciated, even, considering that I might well have casually torn your head off a little while ago, given a need." The face turned back to the page. "But it's over, I think. The Darkhold must win. Balance must then find its way after." A soft inhale. "In the void, we are still falling. Your body is failing you, and so your chained spirit will fail Chthon. _My_ hands are both on the page and the book itself as we speak. It is an offering, a simple one. I am giving Chthon everything it has ever wanted."

Loki turned back to Vittorio Montesi, and, true to his word, now the page and the book lay in his hands. He was smiling, still that small, wry smile as the page slithered across his hand to rejoin the book of its own accord, no longer needing or wanting the unholy ritual that had been so carefully readied for it in the dark heart of France, and Montesi thought there might be a secret behind those teeth. "All Chthon has to do is reach for it."

And Chthon, impossible, unreal, the shape of the neverending dark, stretched down for Loki through countless realities and unrealities, pulling itself through every atom of existence, and a tendril of the impossible, lunatic void began to snake around Loki's waist, ready to claim him.

In the heart of the universe, a howl of victory began to scream, the waveform chaos of a black hole, the song of madness incarnate. Chthon continued to curl, to reach, to sing, to clasp itself around its prize of a willing God, and a book making itself whole again in those long, lapis hands.

. . .

Beside the dissipating Vittorio Montesi on one plane, and beside the rigid figure of Loki on another, Stephen Strange stepped out of hiding. He said, absurdly, "Boop," and the world suddenly turned into blazing, brilliant light.


	18. Chapter 18

18\. He Said the Thing

. . .

Stephen Strange came back from his disembodied sojourn strong with the spirit of Kamar-Taj, the light of the Vishanti coursing through his veins like fire, and he didn't know if that empowerment had come along with Loki's bargain or not. All he could focus on was what he was, the Vishanti's advocate and Supreme, and what needed to be done here. The cant of _I Am,_ that first and final spell that held a sorcerer's soul in place, that named Gods against the darkness, had been on his lips as Loki awoke the Darkhold with his touch, waiting.

Hoggoth was with him now, and Agamotto, if silent and watchful now, and Oshtur, though a fragment of her was also holding Agatha Harkness aloft in power in France at the same time, and their power burst through his scars like a tempest. Montesi was at his feet, fading like a ghost - for in the _between_ that's all he was, particularly now as Chthon cast him aside - and Strange whispered a spell to let the man's spirit pass freely towards his last moments at his daughter's feet.

Loki stood rigid, held in Chthon's grip, as the ink of the Darkhold coated his hands and dripped up his arms towards each elbow. Was he _grinning_? Strange came up next to him, arching an eyebrow as the face turned towards him, still entirely himself, and yes, grinning with hostile merriment. "Loki."

"Don't be fooled, this feels absolutely terrible. But the Vishanti are holding my mind free." The grin became a grimace. "You've got less than five minutes to do what you need, before I'm gone and it's just you and this worthless bastard of a primal trying to hollow me out. I've a final request, just in case, and it's not asking you to go throw yourself off a cliff for screwing up my plan in the final moments."

"Don't be dramatic, asshole, you calculated the odds yourself. They're pretty good." Strange narrowed his eyes. "What's the wish?"

"Say it." The grin came back, turning manic.

"Say what?" But he thought he knew. Loki read the same books, the old ones with spells from eras that were a little foolish and archaic now, spells that Loki had made jokes about that were, he had to admit, pretty damned funny.

"You know full well." The black ink continued to drown Loki's blue skin, and at the fingertips the first words began to appear. Strange made sure not to look at them and their exhortations to unholy chaos. Bad luck to invite the risk at this critical juncture. Chthon thought it had won.

But until it had fully claimed its new Keeper, with his intricate connection to the Darkhold, it was too soon to celebrate. The link could be broken. Nonetheless, some awful keening filled the _between_, a deathly song, like bones scraping against brass. A victor's cry.

Strange frowned, despite his need to hurry. "I don't want to."

"Humor me," said Loki, and the words started to gurgle in his throat as Chthon tried to take his voice for its own. His eyes were still bright ruby, alive and amused. "Come on, Sorcerer Steverino, don't be a poor sport."

"Shit."

"Not _that_."

Strange inhaled, tired and annoyed with the man, but also filled with a scrap of the old 'what the hell.' It would do for a way for focusing the work, in any case, and the Gods he was about to call on might at least appreciate it. He stepped back from Loki, now midway through his transformation into Chthon's latest Keeper, and lifted his glowing hands high. He pitched his voice, readying it for a roar, as if to command a battalion forward into war, and why not? He was.

"BY THE HOARY HOSTS OF HOGGOTH-"

And lo, the spirits that always crowded close around the beast-god's light began to surge, released onto chaos.

"-BY THE EYE OF AGAMOTTO-"

And lo, purple smoke began to fill the _between_, turning all those mirrors of probability into fables of Agamotto's make, changing the potential of reality around then into the worm-god's dream.

"-BY THE OMNIPOTENT OSHTUR-"

And lo, there was her light, the light, the light the Light The Light THE LIGHT _THE LIGHT **THE LIGHT**_

"-BY THE VISHANTI, CHAOS WILL BE BOUND!"

The powers of the Gods ripped through Strange, and he felt the holy three pass through him. He saw Hoggoth and his war-band forge their way up the small tendrils of chaos trying to burrow into Loki's skin, clawing up and up and growing as they approached the monstrous all-thing that was Chthon, and from there the battle passed from what was describable to what could only be sensed, the idea that order and chaos could never fully destroy one another, but when all was out of balance, the universe will fight to set itself on the true axis once more.

Strange inhaled that rich and sacred smoke, seeing Loki held still as the battle raged around him, within him, beyond him, and become part of him, and expected some continually annoyed and immortal piece of the small god was right there in the mix with the Vishanti, doing its best to personally kick Chthon in the jimmy.

It should be noted that the God of Chaos does not have a jimmy, nor was Victoria's birth exactly up to obstetric norms, but Strange figured Loki would figure out how to arrange the act out of sheer unstoppable spite. He'd earned it, Strange figured.

And hey, better Chthon than Strange.

. . .

Vittorio Montesi was still on his knees, his breath coming in shaky hyperventilations. His eyes were greyed out and unfocused, until they weren't. They cleared in time to see Aggie Harkness slump against the altar, the silver bowl cleansed and Oshtur's mission now focused elsewhere. Damien Hellstrom had gotten back up and was securing the not quite dead cultists nearby. Wong was watching him, with a hand on Victoria's shoulder. And she… his daughter was looking at him with revulsion and fear.

"I," he managed to utter through the gasps. "I, I…"

"He's dying," said Wong, calm and plain.

Vittorio felt his face sag, as if from far away. He tried to reach for his daughter, his arm shaking, the scar burning, burning. Varnae wanted him even in death. Perhaps he had never died after all, that his spirit was alive with Chthon and that was why Vittorio had remained loyal all this time, even with his daughter so close. The pain of the bolt wound wasn't enough to keep him free, not here where the power of Chaos was still flickering. "Sorry," he fought for. "Victoria, I'm so sor…."

Her face didn't change much. Perhaps a knot between the brows. His eyes were glazing again. Everything felt far and wee. "Var…" His tongue failed him, going thick and numb. He had earned nothing but this fate, but gods, to at least die free. He realized he must look like he was gibbering, and thought his eyes were beginning to lose all focus, but no, he was starting to slump to one side.

"He was taken," said Harkness. "I was told." She stopped, looking confused. "They said Varnae always made his mark on the left arm, and that he's right. The spirit of something like him never dies. They… say that it's too late for redemptions, or even forgiveness, but that it's up to you if he dies free." She shook her head. "I don't…"

"Oshtur speaks plainly enough when She chooses." Wong picked up the athame from where Victoria had left it. "A vampire wound will usually respond to silver, but it will have no choice but to obey _living_ silver."

Victoria was still looking at him, and from behind the growing haze, Vittorio could not read her expression. But he saw her take the blade from Wong, and he closed his eyes as she approached his sagging body and revealed the old scar on his arm. He heard her hiss a breath at the sight of it.

"It's bleeding," she said, sickened, and he reflexively tried to gag at that news. "Like it's fresh. God. God. Hold on. I'm sorry, this might hurt."

It did, massively, but it was also a cleansing sort of pain. The athame's tip pressed into the place between the two fangholes in his arm, and from the blade poured whitefire light. His entire arm tingled and for a moment he was _back_, entirely aware, seeing his daughter as if for the first time. "Victoria, I am sorry," he said, clearly this time, all in a rush while this golden moment lasted. "I pushed you away. I wish I could say it was a way of trying to save you, perhaps it even was, but that is no excuse for the pain I caused."

She touched his face, her expression confused and hurt.

"No excuse. Not for what I said to you. Not for what I did. But you're safe now. They're binding Chthon, out there in the grey. It will never claim your life, Vicky. The one you made for yourself. I promise you. I promise you…"

The pain began to surge back, but it didn't seem quite so awful anymore. There was a lightness to it that said it was almost over.

"Thank you, Victoria. I was always so proud of you, even when I said terrible things. I wish I hadn't." said Vittorio Montesi, and he died free.

. . .

In the beginning was the void, and from the void came the light. Between the two were born the elder gods, and of them, Oshtur and Chthon were the first. Both of them had the potential for all of light and dark between them, and Oshtur, wise and curious about the vastness of eternity spreading newly around her, chose to explore both. In time she mostly turned to order, as chaos seemed well populated by smaller things, in her estimation. Chthon alone chose to remain solely of the void, as other 'siblings' rose and entered the new universe. It is written in secret books that Oshtur utterly believes this made Chthon weakest of the elders, and oh, how It hates her for that judgment.

In time Oshtur found Hoggoth, another of these new siblings, and then Agamotto, whose creation is now both fact and lie, who was born immortal but, say old secrets or stories, once knew a mortal life. Regardless, as that first family of elder gods separated, it was these three that formed a family of their own. The Vishanti are, ostensibly, Gods of Order, if for no other reason that _someone_ must be as Chthon holds the other side, and it was their Great Work that once formed the Darkhold's opposite - the Book of the Vishanti. Now that great tome floated above Oshtur's left hand, summoned to her by virtue of her word alone. Above the right was the Darkhold, whole and meek before one of the great powers of the universe.

Loki, doing his best to not make a face, was leaning on Doctor Strange. His body hurt like nothing he had ever experienced, pale again now, and paler than ever in his weakness. He suspected it was something like a human flu, where joints felt like glass and muscles knotted in agony as the virus attacked the whole body. He felt feverish and weak, and utterly, utterly drained. Had he known about Aggie's similar recent experience, he might have cracked a joke about something going around in the aetheric currents. Inside his mind, thousands of nightmares let free by Chthon were being trapped and taken away again, but for now his mind buzzed nauseatingly. At least his mind was still _his_. The idiotic gambit had worked.

"I hate you exquisitely," he said without any heat to Strange.

"Yeah, I know, but you just helped to save my ass, the Sanctum, Kamar-Taj, and probably a few other people, too. You'll get over it." Strange turned his attention to the Gods. At Oshtur's feet lay a puddle of darkness - the eternal void incarnate. The edges of it seemed to glitter, chained to witness Order at last. "My lady. My Gods. What would you have your servant do?"

"You will observe, champion of the Vishanti." Oshtur turned her golden eyes away from the books at her hands and looked at the pair. "Order was requested of us, to return balance to this universe. For a time. Scales are not fixed, and evolution requires change. Do you argue this, little god?"

"No," said Loki, not feeling up to being cute.

"You asked the Darkhold to be dealt with, that it may disrupt your lives no further."

"Not in so many words, but basically, yes. Fervently."

Oshtur nodded. "Then this is the cause and the cost of that desire." Abruptly, both books vanished.

Strange jerked forward, almost throwing Loki to the ground. "Hey!" he started, and then caught himself.

Hoggoth gave him a wry side-eye, chuffing out an amused sound.

"This is balance, then. _Both_ must be removed from the chess table. _Both_ must rest." Oshtur's hands came together before her in a gentle clasp. "It will be a season of peace, my supreme, where the balance is held by free will and choice alone. Those who would do evil with our great powers must choose to, and seek to forge their own way into chaos. Those who would seek to act in wisdom…" She let that trail off, then smiled. "Well. There will be those like you to watch for them, and guide their way. Yes?"

Strange nodded, stunned. There had been no era where Kamar-Taj had lost touch with the Book of the Vishanti, not only a simple tome but a conduit to their great powers. This outcome had not crossed his mind, and he realized there was going to be a certain amount of fear among other sorcerers of Earth when they realized that connection was gone.

Next to him, Loki snorted softly. "The books are just a crutch, you idiot. A tool, just like you. You won't need them if you're dedicated enough to what you need. They're references, like any other. _I_ had to learn that about the Darkhold the hard way, so consider this a gentler lesson. And your Gods have gotten an earful about remembering to listen, so you won't be lost in the shuffle for a while. Thanks to me."

Oshtur's face seemed to loom all around them. "Are you certain you wish these acts to be marked as your contribution, small god, that we and We remember this?"

"Yeah," he said brusquely. He cocked a _look_ at the Goddess, wry and tired and knowing all at once. "Come on. The mortal world is more fun to knock around in, anyway."

She studied him as Hoggoth chuffed once more. "You are a bold and sometimes crude child," she told Loki.

"It's been said."

Oshtur frowned. "Even a child can teach a lesson, we suppose." She flicked a hand. "Very well. And now your small bargain will now be resolved, the debt paid. A fair coin, considering what it has bought your world."

Loki inclined his head, all nobility now. "Thank you, Holy Oshtur."

. . .

Rennes-les-Chateau had a lovely view of the sky. Bucolic countryside, with the sun turning the clouds into peach colored cotton, and a dozy village who had known nothing of the war at its tourist trap of a church. Aggie Harkness froze next to an exhausted, cried-out Victoria as the strange sensation that first hit her in the curio shop's warehouse began to crystallize around her again, then realized it wasn't inside her head this time. "What-"

Oshtur stepped onto the small stone lane that wended around the side of the country inn, where Wong was inside to arrange safe travels for those that had freely abandoned Chthon. She looked almost ordinarily human for a moment, save for the pulsating aura. A beautiful woman with obsidian skin and warm, golden eyes, who seemed to emit pure light and thought, and she wore a simple white kitenge-style wrap over a blue patterned dress. "There was once a sorceress named Thorn, and the day came that this one slew Our chosen daughter. In revenge, at her final call for aid, We struck out and marked Thorn well for this insult. We took her life and bound her mortal, and We cursed her blood and her children's blood, for the acts she took against Us."

Aggie stared at the goddess, helpless and silent.

"It has been suggested to Us that the child of the blood might not forever bear the curse of the ancestor, and that the punishment, harsh but fair, now casts a shadow upon those who choose freely to punish their ancestor's decisions in their own way." Oshtur lifted her chin to study Agatha Harkness. "We agree with this assessment. The line of Harkness bears no more curse, yet the gift the blood carries remains. You and your family - sons and daughters both, now - will continue to bear the potential for great power. But it will be in your hands what fate that brings you to. Do you understand, free child?"

"I-I do. I think."

Oshtur nodded, and then she looked at Victoria. "The being that cast you into life… The lesson to Us was writ twice. You as well chose to live freely, though your blood was the blood of our cursed kin."

"I… didn't know," whispered Victoria.

"Whether you had known or no, the point remains. You did not follow your father into chains, though now you hold regret and pain at his fate." Oshtur tilted her head, considering. "We will not take this from you. It is yours to contemplate and learn from. But We will tell you this. He regretted to his last second the acts he took in Chthon's name, bound by that vampiric spirit, and our Sister who took him through the threshold treated him kindly as he walked on."

Victoria shot a look at Agatha, as if she thought there might be an answer there. Oddly enough, Aggie looked as if she understood. Death was known to those around Loki, and it was often that this shape of Death could be gentle - so long as there was at least an honest attempt to earn that gift. "I… thank you, holy Oshtur. It will help."

"Then our debts are paid and the bargain unwound."

"Bargain?" Aggie raised her hand. "I don't understand."

Oshtur ignored her, as was the right of Gods, and she vanished a second later.

"Okay," said Aggie, completely blown out at this point, and, well, at least everything _was_ going to be okay. At last.


	19. Chapter 19

Epilogue: There's Always Another Tale

. . .

Aggie watched Damien confer with her boss, wondering what that was going to be about. The conversation seemed pretty calm for one involving Loki, although being that he still looked about as wrung out as a wet cat, maybe it wasn't all that surprising. She stuck her hands in the pockets of the light jacket she wore, her fingertips picking at each other. Seattle had turned cool and rainy yet again, and they were wrapping up final details outside Montesi's curio shop.

The proprietor herself gave the two men a glance as she stepped out the front door again, coming to Aggie. "What's all that?"

"Don't know yet. Expect I'll find out later." Aggie shrugged. "Nobody's throwing a fit, so, hey."

"Hmm." Montesi let that hang in the air. Then silence hung a little bit longer, edging towards awkward. "So, I've got a question for you."

Aggie was still watching the pair talk, not really thinking about much. Her head still ached from trying to figure out how she'd ended up carrying around a God for a while. It beat the shit out of dying, so it wasn't that she minded, exactly. Just a bit of strangeness in her life even she couldn't have predicted. "Sure."

"Are you… ah…" Montesi trailed off and paused long enough for Aggie to give her a look. "Do you want to have dinner together sometime? Tonight, whenever. Um."

Aggie's hands stopped fidgeting around in her pockets, slowly catching up to the question. "Hm?" Montesi was studying her expression with a worried raptness she couldn't figure out. Then she grasped it. "Oh!"

Montesi stepped back at the startled noise. "If you're not interested, that's _completely_ fine, I just thought I'd ask."

"No it's… I haven't really gotten out much since my husband died."

Montesi cleared her throat and nodded, seeming to already accept that as a gentle refusal.

"It's not like that! He killed himself a few years ago, so it's-" Aggie grimaced, awkward, at the way Montesi whipped around to blink at her. They stared at each other like that for a minute. "Well if you thought _you_ were screwing up, let me just make it all kinds of worse." She managed a nervous laugh, trying to put them both at ease again. "No, it's… I mean, I'm not _sure_ where I am, Vic, but I also haven't thought about my life like that in a long time, so… I mean. It's not that you're throwing me that far, I just… have the social life of a dead rat. But yeah. Yes. Let's… get dinner."

Montesi was still studying her face, making sure it really was okay. "Doesn't have to end as a date. Could turn out we just make a pair of good friends."

"Might." Aggie shrugged. "Might work out, I don't know."

They looked at each other, a little embarrassed, a little confused, but also a little more comfortable with each other. Across the road, Damien threw up his hands, shook his head, and stormed away from Loki. "Fine!" he roared. "A contractor job! Whatever. _God_, you're a weird asshole."

Aggie nodded, suddenly feeling tired all over again. "And so we adopt another one."

"Is that a thing at your job?"

"Look at me, Vic. Think about the cat. Have I got stories for you. It is _definitely_ a thing at SHIELD. We won't be lacking for dinner conversation." Aggie laughed. "I can stay in town a couple nights. I've got time off coming, and Loki doesn't give a damn anyway."

"Good Mex place up the street. I know the guy that runs it."

"Sold," said Aggie, starting to grin again as Damien disappeared down the road with a rude gesture and an expression that said he was actually sort of touched by being wanted for something instead of chased out of town. "I am starving."

. . .

_A few days later_ ~

Wong kept his hands clasped behind his back, looking over the rows of silent books and pointedly not looking at one of the lecterns that was once the occasional nest of the Book of the Vishanti. He understood. Agreed, even, with the judgment of the Gods, not that they required his permit. But he supposed was a Keeper of such tomes in his own way, and it was sorrowful to see one leave his care.

"They're resting?" Strange let himself into the hall of sentient tomes, seeing Wong's hands drift free and then one came forward to lay on the spine of the tome that carried a dragon within its pages.

"They are, but less deeply than before." Wong snorted. "The ancient Long found the new world a fine thing, and she liked fighting for it very much. I will have to make it a point to visit. Perhaps help her - and the others - see a little more of the future they are part of." His lips settled in a faint smile. "A book is truly only as powerful, in the end, as the mind that takes it into itself. As they rest here, they do us little good, and there is much to learn. I could live forever and not have a chance to listen to all of their secrets. But it might be nice to try."

Strange nodded, silent. Then he spoke again, thoughtful. "I wonder why_ I _was chosen as the sorcerer supreme, when it's you that has the most connection to everything Kamar-Taj has to offer."

Wong chuckled, that dry and knowing laugh he had that meant what he said might be a jest - but it also might not be. "Because only you deserve the honored fate of having to speak with our Gods directly."

Strange rolled his eyes, used to his 'jokes.' "Honored. Yeah. I'm _sure_ that's it."

"Speaking of Gods." Wong let go of the ancient Chinese grimoire and turned to his friend.

Strange flapped the edges of the red and living cloak, illustrating his annoyance. "He's fine, he's moody, he sent me a note this morning suggesting I drop dead, and also added those notes on jotun deepcave magelight structures I asked about last month. His people have him on desk rest, which means he's probably going to roll up in a Lambo he stole from Stark's parking garage and get around to kicking my ass by lunch. He keeps his promises, I guess."

"I'll put out a charcuterie board if he does." Wong began to lead Stephen out of the library and back towards the New York Sanctum, feeling content in a way he hadn't in a long time. Perhaps that was going to be part of the lesson he took from this. Elder gods and primordial magic had their place in the universe, but there had been something glorious and true seeing the dragon take her stand, and she was solely part of _their_ world. "Asgardian goat milk makes an excellent cheese, as it happens. I'm glad we were able to get some from Thor. I think you'll both enjoy it."

"Still got some of that old Tonsberg mead? I might make it out nearly intact if you bribe him with it."

"I'll see if I have time to check," said Wong blandly, only for the look on Stephen's face. Of course he had some, and of course it would be out for the two sorcerers later. "We wouldn't want you to be in too much trouble again _quite_ so soon."

. . .

Aggie was in the lounge when Loki did the thing where he abruptly showed up at the stove with a teapot in his hand without any noise or ceremony, nearly dropping her phone mid-text. "Hey, boss."

The pale face came up to regard her with a pointed and deeply meaningful glare. On the far side of his broad shoulders a latched-in flerken rose just enough to let Aggie see the gaping - _way_ too gaping - maw stretch in a galactic-sized yawn. "Don't make me say it again."

"How was Strange?"

A wordless, generically hostile grunt was her first answer. "Lunch was decent," was the second. "He lives another day, I do grudgingly permit. Did Processing get the Hellstrom paperwork I sent them?"

Aggie finished her text and shot it off to Vic. "You can pretend you hate Stephen all you like, but your rivalry's got _nothing_ on how Agent Ellis feels about you down in HR & P."

"Agent Ellis likely sleeps with an outdated copy of the old SSR handbook under his pillow and has the chin of a weak bird under that stupid goatee. He can feel what he likes. Is the paperwork going through?"

"Technically."

"Good enough." Loki took the whistling teakettle off the burner and filled a mug. "I want Hellstrom sent out on the next few idiotic Scooby-Doo jobs they try to fob me onto. If they're going to waste my department's time, they can do it on billable contractor hours. _He_ won't mind, and _my_ mood will improve immensely. Agent Peters can handle the liaison work. She also won't mind, I already saw her checking out Hellstrom's arse this afternoon." He looked up at Aggie, his eyes narrowed into wry hostility. "And _that_, in time, will show our _good Agent Ellis_ in Processing that I can make a decent managerial decision. When I care to."

Aggie nodded, seeing the point. The question came back to her, and she tried to let it go. Loki gestured brusquely at the cabinets where the rest of the mugs were kept, his own question unsaid but clear. Tea for her? "Please."

He pulled a second mug down to set up another batch of sweet smelling Vanaheim herbal tea. "Ask."

Aggie started at the abrupt address. "I wasn't-"

"Yes, you were. Get it out of your system."

She inhaled, the words stuck in her throat. _Why did the Vishanti intervene through me? Why is the curse lifted from my family? Did you do that, somehow?_ She swallowed them all down. She suspected the answer, at least to the last one, was yes, and that somehow answered the others. She didn't understand why, however, and he wouldn't appreciate the attention, much less any form of gratitude. So she dodged. "Are you glad it's over? The book being taken away, all of that?"

"Am I _glad_ the Darkhold will not torment this plane again in my lifetime? That it has fucked off for, as far as _I'm_ concerned, a relative eternity, and its keepers will be no part of me, much less any of you, ever again? Am I _glad_?" Loki shot her a sideways look, one loaded with all sorts of quick flashing emotions. Easy to read for once, and at least not as hostile as he could have been.

"See, that's why I wasn't going to ask." She picked up the mug and gave it a sniff. The only thing she knew about this particular blend of tea was to never ask about this particular blend of tea. There was a chamomile base, recognizably enough, but it was a specific, strange mix with a label she'd seen exactly once - Queen's Whisper - and that told her more than she needed to know.

"I am _absolutely ecstatic_." Loki paused as they both heard her phone bing with a new text. "Take another holiday, go visit your new paramour, I don't give a damn."

"It's not necessarily-"

"Go have a life, Harkness, and quit protesting at me. Time to be done with dark pasts and unending consequences. They bargain roughly, and not as fair as some." He sighed and stuck his hip against the counter, looking off elsewhere as Aggie jerked at the answer to her real question hidden in his words. The flerken was already back to her doze, settled in like a small and hairy pauldron. Was Frej glowing slightly? Aggie blinked before she turned her attention back to Loki. Magical flerkens. All right, then. "Well, that's what I _would_ say. Someday it might even actually be true." He looked back to her, rueful and tired and slightly amused. "There's always another bag of madness waiting for me to carry it off to new and beshitted lands."

She took a sip with a frown, her mind still working to absorb the week's events. It was like dollar store paper towel versus wet cat barf, honestly. "What's going on now?"

He shook his head and straightened back up, cupping his mug within one long, pale hand and preparing to leave again. "I've received a message from an interesting acquaintance, one who's decided, accurately I think, that she has quite the career in galactic intel. Seems a mutual _friend_ of ours is looking for some attention. She suggests staging an intervention. I happen to agree with her assessment."

"Interesting acquaintance? Do you know _anyone_ boring?"

"Coulson isn't exactly what one would consider a disco superstar." Loki glanced back at Harkness, already almost out of the lounge. "But Nebula, like myself, is fated to never have a dull moment." He arched a single black eyebrow before he disappeared. "And our pasts, it seems, can't be shunted off with a handwave from a God."

. . .

Zofia Kovacs was a rarity in Hungary, a kind old woman who went out of her way to be exactly that. She owned her own truck and left her husband behind at the farm to make her long, ranging deliveries along the western border. She sold her fresh wares cheap enough for poorer families to make do, she left toys with her deliveries where she could, and she knew all the old roads and old ways. Zofia sang out her truck's open window from spring to autumn, so the people knew she was coming and would be glad to see her. Police knew Zofia, and military, and all of them knew she was no trouble to anyone at all.

It allowed her a kind of freedom that most people in her neighborhood couldn't imagine, and no one questioned her about where the money came for those little toys and cheap deliveries. She was old and kind, and obviously scrimped and saved to do these things. Obviously.

That morning she let herself into the little shop by the highway, the one that always gave her a freshly boiled egg and warm toast with cheese, where the old man, Josef, was already giving her a knowing nod as he disappeared into the kitchen. The shop only had one other visitor today, the one she expected. But Zofia paused, because the girl she was here to meet looked very young, and very Western-styled under a shocking veil of pure white hair.

The girl looked up at Zofia with a brilliant smile and lifted a hand. It was warm today, despite the dense forest that overtook the border only a few miles away, but the girl was wearing a clean black glove. The outfit, too, was black, a thick shift with a cloak tossed over her shoulder, and the girl's skin was so white that Zofia almost crossed herself, thinking of the legends of blood drinkers. But that was foolish of her. The morning was young and the sun was rising clear and high in the sky. "Zofia?" said the girl, breaking her out of her surprise. The voice was crystalline, with an accent she couldn't place. Not an American after all.

Nonetheless, English was usually a safe way to start. She couldn't keep the hesitation out of her voice as she approached the table. "I am Zofia, miss. You are my passenger today?"

"I am!" Another gleaming, perfect smile. All her teeth straight and cared for. A model, perhaps, or some rich man's child. Why would such a person want her services? "Breakfast here was so good, I haven't eaten anything like this in _forever_!"

Another chill passed over Zofia. Something was odd about this young woman. The food was good here, but plain, hearty farmer food, and the girl looked well-kept and healthy. "Josef's wife makes the bread herself. Every day," she said carefully.

"A treasure." The girl leaned forward, across the table. "Where I came from, things like this were so rare. Chemical nutrition instead of things we cooked. Light from our machines, not the stars." She shook her head. "But I'm sure I'll never see anything like that again. No one will. So it's very important to me that we get on our way as soon as possible, Zofia. And don't worry, I'm being expected." Another smile, this one sharp and knowing. "Even if _they_ don't understand that yet."

Zofia realized her hands was shaking, and she put them behind herself, covering the move with a delicate bow of her head. "Of course, of course."

The girl got up from the table, leaving a little wad of crisp new money behind. Too much for such a small breakfast, but she didn't seem to understand or care. She was average in height, her features elfin, and even those eyes, now that Zofia stood close, were so light a blue they seemed ice-white. "You don't have to be afraid of me, Zofia," said the girl, touching her arm. Even through the black glove, that hand was terrifyingly cold. "All you have to do is take me across the border, like you do, and all those nice children will soon have plenty of toys from their grammie."

The money. The girl gently slipped an envelope into Zofia's jacket, and it was thick and heavy. Too much money for a simple Latverian border crossing where the lost king's robots knew her and let her pass, too much money for breakfast. How had the girl come this far? Zofia shivered again, and wished she could pray without being rude. "I thank you, miss," she said instead, reverting to the safety of her manners. "What may I call you while we ride?"

"I am the Swan," said the girl, studying her face with those old, white eyes, and Zofia saw there was nothing human left there after all. No emotion. No care. Only that precise, cutting interest. "Only that. And I need to go meet an old friend for the first time."

_~Fin_

_"It is the tale, not he who tells it." ~ The Breathing Method, Stephen King_

9/18/19 All rights to Marvel, all blame to these jackasses that I can't stop writing about

Notes:

I wish I knew why every time I put Loki and Stephen in the same room their conversations turn into the verbal abuse equivalent of sweaty ball punching, but I can't say I mind. They're friends, of course, by this point. They'd murder each other for admitting it, and murder me for writing it down again, but it's true. They're each other's one phone call from the drunk tank and they know it. Meanwhile, Wong is just happy to have Stephen fighting someone else instead of bothering him while he's in the library.

Damien Hellstrom (Daimon, fine, fuck), naturally, got signed for a Hulu series just as I kicked into high gear working on this fic. I look forward to seeing how he turns out on screen. I hope he's hot, I won't lie. Meanwhile, you can assume that, for a while, he'll be doing odd jobs for SHIELD that Loki would have a fit about doing, being the sexy Fred to Aggie's stoic Velma, although now we have Victoria Montesi as a guest star version of Daphne and I guess I ship Velma/Daphne after all, huh?

Vittorio and Victoria's histories are adapted with large details wholly made up, though they're indeed Marvel characters with old connections to the Darkhold and Chthon. Victoria, created by Chthon although not quite like this, was one of the first acknowledged LGBT characters in modern comics, although her partner gets basically fridged in their first appearance in The Darkhold #1. The hell with that.

Rennes-les-Chateau, referenced vaguely by Varnae in the first Codex and seen onstage here, is the scandalous setting of one of the late 20th century's favorite conspiracy theories - the blood of the Merovingian princes irrevocably and secretly linked to the blood of Christ. It made headlines all over again as Dan Brown brought out the corpse of this theory to flog for millions of dollars in his famous novel (and Tom Hanks flick) The DaVinci Code. I think that's enough editorializing from me on the topic, but if you'd enjoy reading more about the story behind the story, I recommend a tour through the book that set it all off, Holy Blood, Holy Grail (with a drink at hand), and then, not directly connected but thematically important, Umberto Eco's novel, Foucault's Pendulum. It's a tough read but an excellent one. I think about that book a lot.

The mixed history of Atlantis referenced here is somewhat accurate to comics - Namor's Atlantis today bears little relation to the Conan the Barbarian-linked (yes!) magical land long since lost to the whims of dark gods. And in one of those fun little trivia treats, R'ylleh with the double L is very much a Marvel thing and made a useful setting for Loki's showdown and silent realization that this is how it has to end.

I assume the 'actual' R'yleh is still nice and quiet somewhere else, with dark Cthulhu having a nice dream about the KFC donut chicken sandwich.

And the Swan is, specifically, Marvel's Black Swan. Featured heavily in the Battleworld comics event from a few years with ties to Thanos and Doctor Doom and a lot of time travel, she's complicated to explain, so we're just going to keep introducing her our way. We first saw her in the Codex through a stolen vidfeed image on Sakaar a couple of stories ago, but clearly, she is about to be up to something in Latveria….

Halloween is coming, and I have plans. I have a plan built around a classic but fitting Ingmar Bergman joke, and I hope you'll be happy to read it. It's about Hela and Death, and what being the god of death really means and who has the true right to that title. And then after that will be a little break, probably through the holidays - but when I come back, Nebula's bad family news will be waiting for us. We'll likely meet her adopted flerken, too, come to think of it.

As always, thank you so much for coming along for the ride!


End file.
